Hearthstone
It's time for Hearthstone to have a new Format.
In the past year, Hearthstone has made great strides to offer new content for players. A new Class, Dual-Class Cards, an achievement system, a Battle-Pass (that nobody asked for), the Duels mode, additional minions, tribes, and heroes for Battlegrounds. Now this doesn't look like much, but to be honest this is a lot of content in one year when you compare it to previous years' habits of rinse, wash, repeat. Unfortunately with all the strides that Team 5 has made to make the game better, I've felt an itch that just can't be scratched, and that's the lack of formats.
Everyone here, since this is being posted in the Hearthstone part of the site, is familiar with Standard and Wild. We know how the rotations work, what cards are legal, and what to expect in April of any given year. So I ask, is it enough? Is Standard and Wild enough formats to play on the ladder? My answer is simply no and there are two main reasons for this answer. The Metas, and the collection.
The Meta within Standard waxes and wanes depending on balance changes, combo & archetype discoveries, and obviously the new cards that roll in every ~4 months (with the exception of this and perhaps future expansion cycles). The Meta gets changed up quite a bit on the release of a new expansion which is expected, and can be changed drastically like what we're currently seeing with Evolve Shaman after Demon Hunter got rebalanced. Eventually when Team 5 either throw their hands up and discreetly decide that Standard has had enough balance changes or is more or less into full swing of expansion reveal to keep everyone occupied, the Meta settles and become monotonous. Of course they're trying to remedy this by releasing a mid-expansion set of cards to hopefully shake it up enough, but either way that Meta will settle and players will get bored.
The Meta in Wild, for lack of better terms, has its' roots more planted than that of Standard. We all know Raza & Rez Priest, we all know Odd Paladin, we all know Secret Mage, we all know Bloodreaver Warlock, we all know Dead Man's Warrior, and so on. The deck variety in Wild will always be greater than that in Standard, but that does not mean better. Of the decks listed above, I've never once said to myself "Oh boy! I get to go against (Insert Deck name here) again!" Yeah playing against Galakrond Rogue sucked for a time but at least it was only a Meta deck for so long, as opposed to Wild decks where these offenders will be present until there's literally a card printed out exclusively to combat them. So Wild has its own level of staleness, which funnily enough is at the same time worse, and better than the staleness of Standard.
The second issue is the collection aspect, this is more of a Wild exclusive topic. This topic more aimed towards players who don't/haven't disenchanted their Wild cards. Currently in the game we have ~2,500 collectable cards, and not many of them are playable in terms of being viable in the Wild meta. Additionally, some of these cards never got support after their release, looking at you Moorabi. Beyond cards not getting support we also have powercreep which is something that can't always be avoided and in a way is needed for players to become better, an example being Silverback Patriarch and literally any other 3-cost Taunt minion. Those two simple things combined with the vast amount of cards available in Wild makes wanting a complete collection that much less important.
The only slight remedy of the having a complete or near complete collection being almost useless is the new Duels mode. Some could say that this validates a reasoning for players to hold onto old cards, and it does, but not all players like the idea of drafting cards, myself being one of them. But that's a mode that comes down to personal preference.
So all that above culminating to the point I wanted to make. It's time for Hearthstone to get a new format, preferably this one ;). Joking aside, I, as well as other players, are tired of being stuck in between a format that has the tired same old gimmicks since a deck's inception, and a format that gets stale even when new cards arrive. Some of you may say "Well if Team 5 does add another format, it'll get stale, people will complain about it's imbalances, and won't fix anything long term." Which is true but if Team 5 were to not add just one, but maybe two new formats, it'll give players enough to shuffle in between without getting bored/burned out as easily. Let's also take a step back and brainstorm what those could be.
Explorer - A format in which cards, depending on the amount they were played, get rotated out until the new Hearthstone year.
Pauper - A format in which only common rarity cards are allowed.
Tower - A format in which "random" is not allowed, and in which cards that create other cards is not allowed.
Tribal - A format in which all minions must share the same minion type.
Two-Headed Ogre - Make a 15 card deck, combine it with someone else's 15 card deck, and you go against two other players with their combined 15 card decks.
Hell, maybe even a format that rotates with expansions. What if we had Classic, Basic, Darkmoon Faire, and Whispers of the Old Gods in their own format for 4 months until the next expansion? This could've also been done when Boomsday came out, it could've shared a format with Goblins Vs. Gnomes along with mechs from other expansions.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
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In the past year, Hearthstone has made great strides to offer new content for players. A new Class, Dual-Class Cards, an achievement system, a Battle-Pass (that nobody asked for), the Duels mode, additional minions, tribes, and heroes for Battlegrounds. Now this doesn't look like much, but to be honest this is a lot of content in one year when you compare it to previous years' habits of rinse, wash, repeat. Unfortunately with all the strides that Team 5 has made to make the game better, I've felt an itch that just can't be scratched, and that's the lack of formats.
Everyone here, since this is being posted in the Hearthstone part of the site, is familiar with Standard and Wild. We know how the rotations work, what cards are legal, and what to expect in April of any given year. So I ask, is it enough? Is Standard and Wild enough formats to play on the ladder? My answer is simply no and there are two main reasons for this answer. The Metas, and the collection.
The Meta within Standard waxes and wanes depending on balance changes, combo & archetype discoveries, and obviously the new cards that roll in every ~4 months (with the exception of this and perhaps future expansion cycles). The Meta gets changed up quite a bit on the release of a new expansion which is expected, and can be changed drastically like what we're currently seeing with Evolve Shaman after Demon Hunter got rebalanced. Eventually when Team 5 either throw their hands up and discreetly decide that Standard has had enough balance changes or is more or less into full swing of expansion reveal to keep everyone occupied, the Meta settles and become monotonous. Of course they're trying to remedy this by releasing a mid-expansion set of cards to hopefully shake it up enough, but either way that Meta will settle and players will get bored.
The Meta in Wild, for lack of better terms, has its' roots more planted than that of Standard. We all know Raza & Rez Priest, we all know Odd Paladin, we all know Secret Mage, we all know Bloodreaver Warlock, we all know Dead Man's Warrior, and so on. The deck variety in Wild will always be greater than that in Standard, but that does not mean better. Of the decks listed above, I've never once said to myself "Oh boy! I get to go against (Insert Deck name here) again!" Yeah playing against Galakrond Rogue sucked for a time but at least it was only a Meta deck for so long, as opposed to Wild decks where these offenders will be present until there's literally a card printed out exclusively to combat them. So Wild has its own level of staleness, which funnily enough is at the same time worse, and better than the staleness of Standard.
The second issue is the collection aspect, this is more of a Wild exclusive topic. This topic more aimed towards players who don't/haven't disenchanted their Wild cards. Currently in the game we have ~2,500 collectable cards, and not many of them are playable in terms of being viable in the Wild meta. Additionally, some of these cards never got support after their release, looking at you Moorabi. Beyond cards not getting support we also have powercreep which is something that can't always be avoided and in a way is needed for players to become better, an example being Silverback Patriarch and literally any other 3-cost Taunt minion. Those two simple things combined with the vast amount of cards available in Wild makes wanting a complete collection that much less important.
The only slight remedy of the having a complete or near complete collection being almost useless is the new Duels mode. Some could say that this validates a reasoning for players to hold onto old cards, and it does, but not all players like the idea of drafting cards, myself being one of them. But that's a mode that comes down to personal preference.
So all that above culminating to the point I wanted to make. It's time for Hearthstone to get a new format, preferably this one ;). Joking aside, I, as well as other players, are tired of being stuck in between a format that has the tired same old gimmicks since a deck's inception, and a format that gets stale even when new cards arrive. Some of you may say "Well if Team 5 does add another format, it'll get stale, people will complain about it's imbalances, and won't fix anything long term." Which is true but if Team 5 were to not add just one, but maybe two new formats, it'll give players enough to shuffle in between without getting bored/burned out as easily. Let's also take a step back and brainstorm what those could be.
Explorer - A format in which cards, depending on the amount they were played, get rotated out until the new Hearthstone year.
Pauper - A format in which only common rarity cards are allowed.
Tower - A format in which "random" is not allowed, and in which cards that create other cards is not allowed.
Tribal - A format in which all minions must share the same minion type.
Two-Headed Ogre - Make a 15 card deck, combine it with someone else's 15 card deck, and you go against two other players with their combined 15 card decks.
Hell, maybe even a format that rotates with expansions. What if we had Classic, Basic, Darkmoon Faire, and Whispers of the Old Gods in their own format for 4 months until the next expansion? This could've also been done when Boomsday came out, it could've shared a format with Goblins Vs. Gnomes along with mechs from other expansions.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
Twitch for those of you who care.
Assuming the main aim is to have a dynamic and interesting meta, the easiest (both to implement and come up with) is to just have a rapidly rotating Wild format. E.g. Basic + Classic* + 3 expansions, with the expansions changing every month. Something of the sort gets suggested often, and the beauty of it is that it is obvious it will work: the meta has to change, the reduced pool of cards gives everything a chance to shine, and balance issues resolve themselves quickly.
* I would keep Basic around, but wouldn't be against to switching out Classic.
My thoughts on your other suggestions:
I'd like something rather simple really. I'd like a format that is just a shuffle of a few different sets. Somewhere between 4 and 6 sets that are all put together and you can only play those for a few months, then they choose another random 4 to 6 and go again. You might've meant exactly that with what you said in that last paragraph, but yeah, I feel that would allow a lot of older cards to see play in a meta that doesn't have all the insane crap that wild offers.
You are correct in assuming the aim, which is not only to keep the meta dynamic and interesting, but to keep A meta dynamic and interesting. Also to give those who have full collections a little more variety.
Explorer: The goal of explorer is to allow other classes/archetypes to be on top, at least for a little bit. Not in the scale of Wild where the same decks are constantly being ran for years on end. I prefer card removals instead of all out nerfs. Removals allow for a bit more control in this format without changing others. It worked for Odd/Even decks, it can also work here is how I'm looking at it. I'm not disregarding what you said about nerfing cards instead of removing them, but in a for mat such as explorer, they need for nerfs would be far less.
Pauper: It is a slow format but I only recall the Brawl just being Classic and Basic? Correct me if I'm wrong. I should have clarified this could be applied to either Standard or Wild, or both depending. This is more or less an option for Free to Play players to have so they don't have to struggle so much with cost of the game. I'm a whale, I don't feel that struggle but I think this would be a fair idea for players who have a limited collection.
Tower: This is my way of saying that I'm tired of scenarios where "I should've played around the Pyroblast that was created by the Wand Thief that was created by First Day of School". I'm not asking for a restructure of Standard, just somewhere there's not insane RNG. Praise Yogg but everybody gets tired of praising him every now and then.
Tribal: I wouldn't say a perpetual Murloc meta, but it's something little change things up. Maybe Team 5 will test it as a brawl someday.
Two-Headed Ogre: I don't remember that Brawl, can you post a link?
I really just want other ladder experiences other than what we've had since the inception of Wild if that makes sense.
Twitch for those of you who care.
That's really it. Everyone who plays Standard plays like they're at Grandmasters and must always run a meta deck at all times. In Wild it feels like players are trying to get into the Wild Open (RIP). I just want a format that utilizes other cards than what's dominating Wild and what's meta defining in Standard.
Twitch for those of you who care.
I don't really oppose the ideas behind any new format, but unlike physical card games where you just get everyone present to agree on a set of rules, digital games like HS have to be more concerned about not splitting the player base too much. Now I look at it this way, it is clear that Tavern Brawls are a decent way to handle different formats without splitting the players across ever increasing numbers of game modes. The approach has its flaws, but I appreciate the game mode a little more now :)
Anyway, that's my only real 'gripe' with most suggested formats, especially as the simple rotating Wild approach achieves the aim so cleanly by itself.
The 15 card, shared deck Brawl was super recent and details are found here: https://outof.cards/hearthstone/tavern-brawls/141-half-and-half
I loved the 15 cards deck brawl.
I made my 15 cards deck with the worst possible legendaries (Millhouse Manastorm, Nat Pagle, Tinkmaster Overspark, King Mukla, The Beast, Shu'ma etc. and few class addons) and was really enjoying the second half of my opponents deck.
-=alfi=-
All hearthstone needs is a way to ban classes. You don't like playing against rez priest or control warrior? You like aggro v aggro matchups? Ban warrior and priest. Don't like face decks? Ban rogue, shaman, and demon hunter. Queue times would be longer but game QUALITY would increase. I HATE playing this game most of the time, usually i don't even want to log in for the dailies. Because i know that in the hour or less time it would take me to accomplish winning 7 times. I will get shit on at least 6 times, by people luckier than me, playing netdecks.
Living like that.
Probably impossible. Not least because classes are designed to have some intrinsic weakness against one another, like how hunter has an intrinsic advantage against most rogue and mage decks. So if your wish comes true, then all I need is to make up some hyper face hunter and ban warrior, paladin, shaman and maybe dhunter. Or ultra late game value rogue deck, with hunter and dhunter bans.
Or, just give the players option to create a custom play. (Like custom maps in warcraft 3)
Knowledge is Power
Most of your suggestions are perhaps more suitable as a weekly rotating tavern brawl, because they tend to get old really fast, as well as presenting more problems of their own. Something like pauper mode might look good on paper but in practice is basically reducing hearthstone to curvestone, while Tribal would be unfeasible since there's basically not enough support for anything other than totems and murlocs. There's no 1 mana dragon, for example, and there's only like 2 feasible 1 drop demons, both coincidentally are locked in warlock.
The new formats must also fulfill that one corporate criteria of generating profit. Duels fulfilled it via paywall and heroics mode, and so it follows that if a new format must be introduced at all, I'm sure it must go the same route; either paywalling certain features, or present a tacit requirement for players to spend some* money to have fun in it.
I personally like the idea of a rotating 'limited wild' system, with the cards available for this format to change with every expansion. Will certainly be easier to balance, and will allow us to play with decks from previous metas. It wouldn't even take team5 that much to make it happen. But I hold little hope of seeing this ever coming through. Unless there's some pass you have to buy (either in gold or real money) every expansion to play this mode, I just can't see this design document ever getting past management approval.
You could argue this would be better for the game, since things could then be nerfed in a vacuum unlike the way its going with scissors being nerfed because rock just got nerfed and because rock is nerfed scissors will be too powerful ala what we just saw with highlander hunter. Just make the classes equals. If you want to print busted cards, do it. Just not in one class.
Living like that.
this...
It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.
I would have thought it would help monetise Wild all by itself, at least enough to cover the small cost of implementing it (they don't need to do anything at all to support it beyond choosing new sets every so often). It would actually push people to buy Wild packs, whereas at the moment most Wild players already have what they need for the slowly changing meta and only buy Standard packs.
I made a concept for that, but I think it's too complicated for a game with 7 year old code to implement.
Twitch for those of you who care.
In all honesty, they could rotate some of these formats monthly and I'd be pretty happy with it. I just need some variance between Standard and Wild. Tribal could be a challenge for dragons and other tribes, one solution could be spell that spawn said 1/1 minions of that tribe. As for one of these formats becoming old really quick, that's inevitable, as for every mode that has came to the game. I see it as once the game has so much to do, it'll be hard to become tired of the game as a whole.
These formats will not generate revenue on their own merit, but will more or less add to the incentive of buying new cards/packs. Standard creates the largest sources of revenue in the game and these formats are more or less "piggy-backing" off of Standard. Some don't require additional purchases outside of Standard but at the same time they make the idea of purchasing packs that much more attractive.
A format in which Wild sets rotate in and out was tried in the past, and it was terrible. I wouldn't be opposed to them trying it again though.
Twitch for those of you who care.
What you're describing is effectively tavern brawl, but focusing only on the constructed deck parts, which wouldn't be a bad idea but since tavern brawl already exists, its kinda hard to justify selling another mode thats essentially a larger and longer tavern brawl.
A slight comment on your comment about the tribal mode. Its a lot bigger problem than what I initially pointed out as an example. Murlocs and totems have more synergies than other tribes and are more or less confined within their own tribes. This is not the case for others, with the current pool of cards anyway. In order to make this work, team5 would have to create more cards, but the biggest problem would be, to paraphrase an old adage, "if everything is a tribe, then there are no tribes". Imagine an all or nothing murloc deck. Murloc Warleader might as well just read "all your minions have 2 attack". Where's the downside of a deck building constraint that comes with a tribe-heavy deck when we're only permitted to play said tribe cards? There's no conditions to fulfill, if the condition itself is mandatory from the start.
The only instant I can remember of this was a tavern brawl that actually managed this, allowing us to only use cards from 3 different expansions (cant remember which, but GvG was certainly part of it). From what I recall, it was a smashing success for the few brief days it was up. The only downside was that it only lasted a few days so it seemed a waste of dust for those without the cards and only committed to standard.
Maybe I'm missing something here, but to me that was one of the few tavern brawls I actually played just for the fun of it. Would be more than glad to see it full time.
It would certainly push wild pack sales if this was implemented, but there will come a time when nearly all serious players would already have all the wild cards they need and then the sales will come crashing to a halt, which will ironically come faster than we think because of the duplicate protection. That's probably why it hasn't been implemented yet, despite the fact that it wouldn't even come to close to the resources needed to implement the duels mode.
There needs to be a monetization system for this mode that is equal if not surpassing that of duels for this to ever be a realistic consideration. Sadly that's the kind of world we live in with activision-blizz
I didn't really agree with the suggested formats in your first post, and angry shuckle pretty succintly explained the problems with the suggested formats. However, the bold part above I do agree with 100%. I'm a bit tired of every.single.player playing tier 1 meta decks like they think they're gonna get an invite to a tournament invitational. The one thing I enjoy about Legends of Runeterra is that MANY decks are viable, and (currently) there's a fairly healthy meta with very little win percentage differnces between the decks. Simply put, games in LOR play out differently because you have to constantly evaluate for tempo.
I also often wonder if a hero power (which was supposed to be something you played to fill turns) detrimentally affects the game by forcing certain decks to synergize with a hero power, while other decks may not use theirs much, if at all. (Namely certain classes are defined by their hero power, like warlock and hunter...and other classes just use their hero power to fill turns but don't feel very impactful or strong, like shaman)
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Logistics aside, it's not impossible. Warcraft 3 let people ban maps that they didn't like. There's not much difference there. And IF (big IF) a ban system were put into place it would most likely be "ban the 2 classes you don't want to see". This still leaves 8 other classes to counter your deck. With a big enough playerbase, this wouldn't even really affect queue times to be honest. It's not the best solution, but it is a viable solution..
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I'm not so doubtful they would consider it. A bit of digging found this article from ~10 months ago, where Dean Ayala asked about whether there were any "rotating format ideas [we] liked a lot": https://outof.cards/hearthstone/854-blizzards-dean-ayala-talks-about-no-plans-for-wild-nerfs-asks-the-community-about-rotating-formats. If that was February, and they heard a lot of pleas for a rotating Wild format, it could plausibly have made its way onto the year plan in April as the hidden new game mode for phase 3.
As it stands, HS is failing to tap into the advantages of digital games being able to sell old packs to new players, and it cannot be that hard to convince the accounting department with the prospect of a permanent trickle of income from the entire history of the game for a low initial cost of setting it up.
It could be harder to sell, but I think another ladder format, of a certain kind, would be welcomed. We as players are used to Standard and Wild and I don't think many would be against the idea of a new way to climb ladder.
I see what you're saying with Tribal, and you're right. Murlocs have the most synergy and can stampede a board rather quickly. Team 5 could print more cards to support other Tribes to be on par with Murlocs, but the likelihood of that happening is equivalent to getting Tournament mode.
I remember what it was, it was the Doom in the Tomb event where a number of cards came back and created a meta which funnily enough, was defined by Evolve Shaman. I didn't like that event itself since the Wild cards stayed for wat too long, but I wouldn't be opposed to something similar happening again.
Twitch for those of you who care.
I wouldn't mind a format that is based around a rotating theme. E.g., maybe they have the theme be Explorers for ~3 months, and you are allowed to use cards from Saviors of Uldum and League of Explorers and a few select others that synergize with them. Somewhat comparable to MtG's "blocks", if you're familiar with that format.
I've always been a little sad that Blizzard puts so much effort into lore and backstory and aesthetics, but it all goes to the wayside if the cards themselves can't beat whatever the standard meta is at that time.
I think we can both agree that's hardly a fair assessment since team5 cherry picked cards from multiple expansions and grafted them onto standard. Either way, I didn't actually have any problems with it, since evolve shaman then was what I would call "manageable", hardly the same bs we are encountering right now. Like yourself, I would like to see more regular events like it in future.
The tavern brawl I cited provides a more accurate picture, and as I have mentioned, it was to me a great success.
Just make Duels playable, maybe?
The Only Constructed Deck Worth Playing:
https://outof.cards/hearthstone/decks/43506-the-only-constructed-deck-worth-playing
Yeah I remembered that. That was what led me to believe that the incoming new format was going to be exactly a rotating wild mode. Then reality hit and we got duels instead, which incidentally enough, also came with the idea of a rotating set. Maybe the stars will align and limited wild gets considered in some distant future. But its becoming clear from battlegrounds and now duels, that unless a strong and subtle monetary system can be jammed, crying and screaming, right into it, I'm not optimistic.
Its hardly the same comparing banning classes with map bans in W3. From the competitive standpoint, the map bans were explained as necessary since certain maps are either too large, present too few resources, or simply skewed towards certain races. No such dilemma exists for hearthstone.
Allowing class bans in hearthstone is more or less equal to race bans in W3, in which case nearly everyone will ban either orcs or humans. Humans in particular.
In hearthstone, banning classes has huge implications. Aside from the ones I mentioned earlier, it also affects card design to a rather bizarre point where the stronger the deck the less it will face anything else aside from itself. Tech cards will be mostly unnecessary, while some cards like healing or board clears can be put aside with clever ban strats. In other words, its possible to simply have decks that have no counters.
Apart from everything else, it also doesnt really solve anything. Metas will simply adapt, and pretty soon we'll be seeing reports on what to ban, and what to play on certain bans. Then what follows would be the same thing as it has always been; people complaining about netdecking with an additional gripe on how the bans are unfair to certain classes (of which I would agree)
I am hoping that the new game mode penned in for the DMF block is the simple rotating Wild format. It's proximity to the release of Duels makes it unlikely to be something that requires a lot of effort to implement, and more likely to be something they could sort out quickly. (These are the same devs that took forever to do the obvious and give us a scroll bar for extra deck slots, so 'quickly' is a relative term.)
If was any new Mode id love nothign more then this.
I made a concept for one, but looking back it's too much content for free without Team 5 being able to really monetize it.
Twitch for those of you who care.
I would like to have a "Speed mode" or just the option to speed up the game in general. Especially the animations are all waaay to slow! You should have the option to set the animation speed to 2x, 3x or even 4x.
I see you!
I would like to see temporary buffs to select cards in the wild format (especially legendaries and epics that don't see much play). 1 time at the start of the month, buff a set of cards in each class, and let the last set of buffs go back to their original mana/stats. Rinse and repeat.