There was 0 reason to buff Edwin. Rogue was in a great place and almost certainly would flourish further with nerfs to the top decks. Huge mistake.
In general, there has been a very unfortunate trend with the last few sets - the first balance patch sucks. It always puts us into a situation where there are fewer viable decks.
Honestly, if a full board freeze that potentially generates a huge threat (while being playable up to four times a game) is "the glue holding the meta together," then it's likely you really need to reexamine exactly what you're trying to accomplish as a Hearthstone designer. In general it feels like the game needs a real power down, as unpopular as that may be to some people.
You could argue a lot as to what is or isn't a design mistake the HS team has made recently, but if I had to make a claim, the biggest offender has to be Prince Renathal. It fundamentally changes both the goal that aggro has to meet to get over the line while simultaneously allowing slower decks to be greedier than ever thanks to the general under-appreciation the HS team seems to have for the value of card draw these days. A lot of what makes a current deck meta is the ability for a class to either utilize this card given their specific tools, or to be able to still beat a deck otherwise empowered by it.
I actually kind of doubt it's a professionalism thing, Zacho doesn't have much of a filter. I'd expect more that there's only so many ways to say 'X is trash, don't play it' before your content is just boring to listen to.
As expected, I got Legend with Naga Priest. I had actually stopped playing it for the last two weeks or so, giving other things a try, but when I fell to rank 5, no stars, I figured that I’d done enough playing around and it was time to get my dumpster Legend for the month. It pretty much destroyed the field. I think that I was on a five or six game win streak to hit Legend.
Naga Priest
1x (0) Priestess Valishj
2x (1) Serpent Wig
2x (1) Shadow Word: Devour
1x (1) Shard of the Naaru
2x (1) Vicious Slitherspear
2x (2) Amalgam of the Deep
2x (2) Bless
2x (2) Murkwater Scribe
2x (2) Radiant Elemental
2x (2) Thrive in the Shadows
2x (3) Cathedral of Atonement
2x (3) Handmaiden
1x (3) Pelagos
2x (3) Treasure Guard
1x (3) Zola the Gorgon
1x (4) Blademaster Samuro
2x (4) Boon of the Ascended
1x (4) School Teacher
8,200 or so in NA. Like I said, I spent a lot of time playing bad decks before deciding that I might as well get back to Naga Priest and go for Legend.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
Note that included in this is a move to a currency for shop purchases, so that instead of just buying something, you can buy 800 crystals to buy something that costs 700 crystals and then have 100 crystals sitting in your inventory going "What if you bought more crystals so that we could be useful"
Shoot m to BITS (hold Y) [hard] C109-0000-014D-4E09 P-POWER Switch Palace 3838-0000-0122-9359 Raiding the Serpents Tomb 1A04-0000-0098-C11E I like to move it, move it FCE2-0000-00D7-9048
the battlegrounds stuff seems okay actually, with the notable exception of putting the bonus hero options behind the paywall. The other previous perks go baseline so fair enough and the new rewards track seems like a good idea, but the extra hero options are just such an advantage. I'm sure they know this and it's a way to get people to pay up, but still
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
And yeah, sorry Dibby. The battlegrounds pass is now a real money only feature.
Q: I used to be able to get Perks with Gold, why do I need to pay now?
A: We want Battlegrounds to be played and loved for years to come. This change will allow us to continue to support and make content for the growing Battlegrounds community. Though the ability to choose from among four heroes at the beginning of a match is changing to a paid-only feature, all players can still play Battlegrounds for free. We’re committed to maintaining hero and gameplay balance so that the choice from four heroes is more about optionality than power.
Additionally, as part of these changes, we're giving away more free Battlegrounds content than ever before. Advanced stats and base emotes are now available to all players, we’ve dissolved Hero Early Access to allow all players to play with new Heroes on patch day, and there are several free rewards on the Battlegrounds Track.
lmfao fuck this shit
This is the trashiest shit I've ever seen
Also this "Quest" shit looks fucking awful, like okay if it was just a limited time thing like Darkmoon Prizes sure but it's just There the entire time
edit:
Q: Do Battlegrounds Missions award regular XP, too?
A: No. You will still gain some Hearthstone Rewards Track XP as you play Battlegrounds, and there will still be some Daily and Weekly Hearthstone Quests that will be completable in Battlegrounds, but the Battlegrounds Missions will only award Battlegrounds XP.
So I understand why Team 5 decided to make the BG paid-only pass change, and I could see how it's possibly a good idea from their point of view/desire to make BGs profitable to justify devoting significant staff to it.
But the thing I am most curious about in all this is: did Team 5 expect the reaction they're getting to the announcement? Or are they legitimately surprised that there has been an immediate onslaught of negative feedback? Because this is the third year in a row now where they've made a major announcement that (presumably) they thought the player base at large would be excited about and it's getting heavily crapped on online.
I’m sure they knew, there’d be no reason to dress it up in all the ‘look at all the stuff we’re giving you’ language if they thought people would be eager to buy it anyway
But like, they can’t come out and announce hey guys we know you won’t like this but we just really like money yanno?
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
+2
Options
reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
I’m sure they knew, there’d be no reason to dress it up in all the ‘look at all the stuff we’re giving you’ language if they thought people would be eager to buy it anyway
But like, they can’t come out and announce hey guys we know you won’t like this but we just really like money yanno?
It's possible they thought that all the "look at all the stuff we're giving you" stuff would prevent a negative reaction.
I’m sure they knew, there’d be no reason to dress it up in all the ‘look at all the stuff we’re giving you’ language if they thought people would be eager to buy it anyway
But like, they can’t come out and announce hey guys we know you won’t like this but we just really like money yanno?
Normally that would be my going in assumption, but the fact that they were (ostensibly) genuinely surprised by the large amount of negative reaction to both the Rewards Track 1.0 and Mercenaries reveals makes me second guess how well they think some of their bombs will go over.
Honestly mercenaries probably would have gone over better if it wasn't so fucking slow at launch
Everyone gets a quest to try out their new mode and what they get is a game mode where you only ever have one decision to make, the interface takes about 5 seconds to make each of those decisions, and the animations play out like molasses giving up on life.
People will play plenty of games that are as grindy and exploitative as mercenaries is if not more, but not if it's boring
But Mercenaries is a year old now and it's still slow as shit. The only significant thing they did to accelerate things is making the mercenary tasks chain into the next one automatically, which was a good change, but all of the interface stuff is still just as pitch as it was at launch.
That said, I'm talking specifically about the Mercs reveal stuff a few weeks before the masses could even get their hands on it. The initial reveal stuff was heavily focused on how the mode was monetized, what you could spend money on, how much things cost, etc. and less on how the mode would be fun, what engaging mechanics there would be, or why people should want to play it for hours and hours (Kobayashi Maru, I know, but still), and the players picked up on that and reacted with vitriol before we even realized just how damn slow and tedious the actual gameplay loop was going to be.
Oh don't get me wrong I think Mercs fucking sucks and tying it to the Hearthstone client at all was doomed to fail. I'm more reaching out and speaking abstractly
0
Options
GrobianWhat's on sale?Pliers!Registered Userregular
I'm not surprised at all by the BG changes. It's fine for me as someone playing BGs almost exclusively. I didn't use all the gold and cards the BG playing generated. Sucks to have to pay for the hero selection, but I'll try without it. Maybe it's not too bad.
The only thing I'm missing from the announcement is the changes to the 20 or so worst heroes that should come with it.
Quests don't look good, imo. It looks like they can clash with whatever game plan Bob offers you or help a lot. So games will be more random and swingy? We'll see how it works in practice.
As a very casual BGs player, the BGs quests don't look... bad to me? As a mechanism to mix games up a bit and potentially make players have to adapt their strategies on the fly, it seems like it would be at least somewhat effective.
I do see how there's the potential for someone to highroll and run away with the game because they got offered just the right quest and Bob tossed out just the right minions for them to complete it super fast. But at least from the preview, the payoffs didn't seem insanely strong or anything. +5 attack to all your minions, for example, is no doubt helpful but certainly not a game-winning perk by itself.
0
Options
lwt1973King of ThievesSyndicationRegistered Userregular
I just laugh at the reasoning behind the paywall changes.
If I were to play “honest blizzard communication person” for a minute, here’s what I would say:
“Listen everyone. BGs is too successful right now to not monetize more, so if you don’t pay you are now at a competitive disadvantage. You can only undo that with real money”
“Speaking of real money, transaction fees on small purchases are hurting our bottom line too much to offer some of them, so now we are letting you preload money into your account at fixed amounts. This can let us sell lower priced items individually. It also may skirt some laws”
“Yes this means you may have to waste some money at some point when you try to buy a $1 item but have to upload $5. And no, you can’t just preload this money into a battlenet account so it can be used across games because then we wouldn’t make as much money”
"He's sulking in his tent like Achilles! It's the Iliad?...from Homer?! READ A BOOK!!" -Handy
+3
Options
ObiFettUse the ForceAs You WishRegistered Userregular
Oddly, I feel like that would go over better. Players are generally tired of being lied to and treated like idiots.
As a very casual BGs player, the BGs quests don't look... bad to me? As a mechanism to mix games up a bit and potentially make players have to adapt their strategies on the fly, it seems like it would be at least somewhat effective.
I do see how there's the potential for someone to highroll and run away with the game because they got offered just the right quest and Bob tossed out just the right minions for them to complete it super fast. But at least from the preview, the payoffs didn't seem insanely strong or anything. +5 attack to all your minions, for example, is no doubt helpful but certainly not a game-winning perk by itself.
Some of the quest rewards are insanely strong. Like golden two minions for free (every turn I guess, since rewards are supposed to be permanent).
Some are very build specific, like get 2 naga every turn or passive scaling for death rattle minions.
Imo this leads to the high rolls being higher which already was a problem with darkmoon prizes. But we'll see how it turns out.
Posts
he put it on his twitter yesterday
he feels like nerfing shaman was a mistake because it was the 'glue holding the meta together'
i think everyone can agree that 3 mana edwin is oppressive as fuck and needs an immediate revert
The Edwin buff was definitely weird though. Feels like the first time they ever buffed a card that was already seeing a significant amount of play.
In general, there has been a very unfortunate trend with the last few sets - the first balance patch sucks. It always puts us into a situation where there are fewer viable decks.
You could argue a lot as to what is or isn't a design mistake the HS team has made recently, but if I had to make a claim, the biggest offender has to be Prince Renathal. It fundamentally changes both the goal that aggro has to meet to get over the line while simultaneously allowing slower decks to be greedier than ever thanks to the general under-appreciation the HS team seems to have for the value of card draw these days. A lot of what makes a current deck meta is the ability for a class to either utilize this card given their specific tools, or to be able to still beat a deck otherwise empowered by it.
As expected, I got Legend with Naga Priest. I had actually stopped playing it for the last two weeks or so, giving other things a try, but when I fell to rank 5, no stars, I figured that I’d done enough playing around and it was time to get my dumpster Legend for the month. It pretty much destroyed the field. I think that I was on a five or six game win streak to hit Legend.
Naga Priest
1x (0) Priestess Valishj
2x (1) Serpent Wig
2x (1) Shadow Word: Devour
1x (1) Shard of the Naaru
2x (1) Vicious Slitherspear
2x (2) Amalgam of the Deep
2x (2) Bless
2x (2) Murkwater Scribe
2x (2) Radiant Elemental
2x (2) Thrive in the Shadows
2x (3) Cathedral of Atonement
2x (3) Handmaiden
1x (3) Pelagos
2x (3) Treasure Guard
1x (3) Zola the Gorgon
1x (4) Blademaster Samuro
2x (4) Boon of the Ascended
1x (4) School Teacher
Code: AAECAdCLBQb76AOH9wOJsgSWtwSW1AT62wQMrYoEhKMEiaME7bEEiLIEpLYEp7YEh7cEssEE9dME9NsEhoMFAA==
8,200 or so in NA. Like I said, I spent a lot of time playing bad decks before deciding that I might as well get back to Naga Priest and go for Legend.
Edit: Dibby Not Being Pissed at Patch 24.2 Challenge (IMPOSSIBLE)
Note that included in this is a move to a currency for shop purchases, so that instead of just buying something, you can buy 800 crystals to buy something that costs 700 crystals and then have 100 crystals sitting in your inventory going "What if you bought more crystals so that we could be useful"
If its not contributing to my core Hearthstone exp gain, its not getting played.
Shoot m to BITS (hold Y) [hard] C109-0000-014D-4E09
P-POWER Switch Palace 3838-0000-0122-9359
Raiding the Serpents Tomb 1A04-0000-0098-C11E
I like to move it, move it FCE2-0000-00D7-9048
See my profile here!
He had just played Ulthok on the previous turn, so all the cards in my hand cost health instead of mana.
Nagaling casts Fel Barrage. Kurtrus currently has 4/4 rush minions. Jace will cast Chaos Strike and Multi-Strike
Here's how I solved it:
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
lmfao fuck this shit
This is the trashiest shit I've ever seen
Also this "Quest" shit looks fucking awful, like okay if it was just a limited time thing like Darkmoon Prizes sure but it's just There the entire time
edit:
HAHAHAHAH FUCK THIS
Battle.net Tag: Dibby#1582
But the thing I am most curious about in all this is: did Team 5 expect the reaction they're getting to the announcement? Or are they legitimately surprised that there has been an immediate onslaught of negative feedback? Because this is the third year in a row now where they've made a major announcement that (presumably) they thought the player base at large would be excited about and it's getting heavily crapped on online.
But like, they can’t come out and announce hey guys we know you won’t like this but we just really like money yanno?
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
It's possible they thought that all the "look at all the stuff we're giving you" stuff would prevent a negative reaction.
Everyone gets a quest to try out their new mode and what they get is a game mode where you only ever have one decision to make, the interface takes about 5 seconds to make each of those decisions, and the animations play out like molasses giving up on life.
People will play plenty of games that are as grindy and exploitative as mercenaries is if not more, but not if it's boring
That said, I'm talking specifically about the Mercs reveal stuff a few weeks before the masses could even get their hands on it. The initial reveal stuff was heavily focused on how the mode was monetized, what you could spend money on, how much things cost, etc. and less on how the mode would be fun, what engaging mechanics there would be, or why people should want to play it for hours and hours (Kobayashi Maru, I know, but still), and the players picked up on that and reacted with vitriol before we even realized just how damn slow and tedious the actual gameplay loop was going to be.
even the basic adventure trees or whatever are dead boring and I can't imagine the pvp is better
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
The only thing I'm missing from the announcement is the changes to the 20 or so worst heroes that should come with it.
Quests don't look good, imo. It looks like they can clash with whatever game plan Bob offers you or help a lot. So games will be more random and swingy? We'll see how it works in practice.
I do see how there's the potential for someone to highroll and run away with the game because they got offered just the right quest and Bob tossed out just the right minions for them to complete it super fast. But at least from the preview, the payoffs didn't seem insanely strong or anything. +5 attack to all your minions, for example, is no doubt helpful but certainly not a game-winning perk by itself.
Just say it like it is:
From @J_Alexander_HS:
If I were to play “honest blizzard communication person” for a minute, here’s what I would say:
“Listen everyone. BGs is too successful right now to not monetize more, so if you don’t pay you are now at a competitive disadvantage. You can only undo that with real money”
“Speaking of real money, transaction fees on small purchases are hurting our bottom line too much to offer some of them, so now we are letting you preload money into your account at fixed amounts. This can let us sell lower priced items individually. It also may skirt some laws”
“Yes this means you may have to waste some money at some point when you try to buy a $1 item but have to upload $5. And no, you can’t just preload this money into a battlenet account so it can be used across games because then we wouldn’t make as much money”
Demon is going heavy on the eating of Tavern minions. They even get a demon that passively buffs the tavern.
Also the big news is that Sefin is out and Toxfin is back in. That's huge and will def make more poison available.
Some of the quest rewards are insanely strong. Like golden two minions for free (every turn I guess, since rewards are supposed to be permanent).
Some are very build specific, like get 2 naga every turn or passive scaling for death rattle minions.
Imo this leads to the high rolls being higher which already was a problem with darkmoon prizes. But we'll see how it turns out.
Many quest rewards are in this Twitter thread
https://mobile.twitter.com/ninaisnoob/status/1562604004617596929?s=20&t=rYNM5ejOSvnrUO0kfI6tyQ