Idea to revolutionize Hearthstone

As a player who loves to build decks and loves to see a meta with a great variety of different archtypes, the first month of an new Expansion ist my favorite time of Hearthstone.

As time is passing by the meta settles and  most decks just differ by a minority of cards. Sure sometimes someone finds a new deck and the meta might redifine itself a little, but overall the game loses it's appealing character to adapt and improve your deck.

So my idea to keep Hearthstone fresh:

Add a rotating pool of cards to standard

• These cards are from the old expansions
• Everyone  can use them without having them in their collection (like a extra section of basic cards)
• Maybe 3-4 class cards and 10-20 neutrals?
• Time per cyle 1 month

This way the game would stay fresh between the release of new expansions, while Blizzard woudn't lose money and standard would stay balanced by their Definition.

What are your thoughts on my Idea?

It would be nice, but maybe as a new format instead.

Some different modes alongside the few existing one could indeed be a good thing to fresh up the game after all this years.

I think it sounds like a fun idea. Would probably be too confusing for new people joining. New expansions are clearly signposted (lots of advertising, competitions and reveals) so they know something is happening. But to start playing, and then a week later have a random set of cards rotate will be a set back to understanding their decks and card collection?

Maybe something for Wild, or Wild+?

Just make small mid-expansions, like the old adventures.

Yea if they move adventures between releases with a small pool to gain it would cause deck refinements and a constant fresh wind.

I also like the idea. Even if those cards are not for free...

İ think if we get 1 buff,2 nerfs and an advanture in every expension it will be enough to keep meta fresh.

Changing standart rotation like arena is really bad for new players to get in. Hearthstone is already expensive and complex to play.

I was thinking in another direction to other night. I was thinking, I don't play magic or anything but I happened to have seen it a few times and I believe there is a lot more variety due to cards not being locked to classes. Colours sure, but you can still choose what to add, leaving tactics aside cuz that's not the point..

So I was thinking, we had dual-class mode in arena, why not add that as a mode in constructed? Sure, some classes combine better than others and in time metadecks will exist and be  top of the pack. But I think there will be more options, and imo it would also make more sense in this sort of mode to have like a monthly (or maybe bimonthly) rotation of cards. I guess it would also make more sense as an arena-mode but I want it to be free to play so yeah. Maybe instead, in an effort to keep the mode entertaining, we could remove the rewards in that mode. No gold for 3 wins, no ranking so it can be casual.

I'd love a meme-mode in hearthstone because there are so many meme-y gameplans that are just not viable anywhere else because of the amount of players that would rather get their daily 100g asap. Which is ofc their right. And I don't mind losing but if I make a meme-deck and can't even get so far as to do my meme thing I do get frustrated ;)

They're already sort of doing this by buffing/nerfing and rotating cards mid-season rather than at the start of the year. Clearly the devs understand that the game gets stale after long periods without new content or changes.

I wouldn't mind a rotating list of older cards, although I would have it replace basic/classic so there wouldn't be an evergreen card pool, and I'd probably have rotations occur a bit slower, maybe once every three/four months or so, timed to fall in between set releases. Oh and I'd probably only rotate about a quarter of this set out at a time so there's still some level of consistency.

I think this would work better as a third game mode that is intended for long-time players who want a meta that changes as fast as possible. The sets valid for the game mode should change every month. The developers could choose half of the cards from each set to make temporarily available to everyone and uncraftable in that game mode for that month (like basic cards), which would make it so newer players would still be able to make fairly good decks without having any wild cards.

If this would happen (bring back some old sets/cards) to constructed mode, it would have to be another game mode, but... they would face 2 problems: first - would they allow people to buy packs with gold? Second - how would they deal with thousands of complaining players that dusted their rotated cards?

I also thought about this myself. In my opinion, there should be a third constructed mode, with rotating sets, in a seasonal fashion, just like the arena nowadays. So, in an economic point of view, for Blizzard, I think it wouldn't be feasible...

It sounds like an interesting idea for standard.

However, metas would still eventually stagnate. The difference would be that the mini-metas just wouldn't last more than that one month. It also wouldn't necessarily mean that random clown fiesta homebrews would hit legend as consistently as more refined decks.

While this is not a bad idea, I hate to say that this will never be implemented.

Mainly because it affects tournaments. I don’t think any tournament goer would be enthused about going up against a deck that has some unexpected tools/cards that could totally shift the match

Bringing back old cards is VERY messy.  All it take is one Spreading Plague or a [Hearthstone Card (Firelance Portal) Not Found] to completely gut the balance of a meta, especially since the old sets are meant to be balanced between each other and NOT with future sets.  Besides, Standard is meant to be for pulling NEW cards, not the old ones.  If I honestly wanted to play with the old sets I would go to Wild.  

Myself I very much prefer the method used last set: buff cards from last year's set.  It provides more of what you are looking at, is easier to manage since the basic design of the cards are already meant to exist in standard, and if they DO change the meta it's for a very short time (in case anyone didn't notice: Sn1p Sn4p is technically a Boomsday card, so he's gone next year).  

If they bring a way to mix old and new cards, it should be entire sets.  I'm ALLLL for a new format similar to the brawls where different sets are combined.

Honestly, the last set did a great job of solving the old problems of staleness.  By the time we finally establishd a stable meta we were a week into the card release period of Uldun.  That was caused by a new set, a nerfing a month in and a buffing the following month.  That along with combining the delayed eleaes of the single player and good brawls on top of it and...well.. just moar of that.  They can literally lock down the dates, make it a normal thing.  

How about they don't make 90% of the set garbage and then the rest 10% broken so decks buld themselves

Quote From SunbleachedAngel

How about they don't make 90% of the set garbage and then the rest 10% broken so decks buld themselves

While this will be downvoted to oblivion, it is actually true...

Metas are completely figured out in 2 weeks after the expansion,  and the game becomes completely stale in the first month.

The only way to combat this is by making at least half of the expansion playable and add completixity and variety to the game. This is where many people make the false assumption that the problem is the lack of new cards. The game as card game, is and has been utter shit, because every match will play the same and against the same decks. Even if there many viable decks almost all of them will be confined in a 2 to 3 archetypes. So you basically have 2 to 3 decks that play the same but have different collours.

As long as:

1)you cannot react during the opponents turn

2)the decks are too shallow and are figured out by everyone after a couple of games

3) the majority of cards are utter garbage

the game will be in a constant stale phase with some breaks during expansion.

But this will not change, nor they will listen to "patch" fixes  like op's because hs is not a card game but a mobile game with cards, and it's damm good in that perspective The formula works and it brings them a fortune so why they should change it? 

I’ve seen a few suggestions like this.  There is a brawl that’s very close actually.  It’s lots of fun but I would like this mode in addition to the current formats, not instead of

Quote From Painkiller1724

If this would happen (bring back some old sets/cards) to constructed mode, it would have to be another game mode, but... they would face 2 problems: first - would they allow people to buy packs with gold? Second - how would they deal with thousands of complaining players that dusted their rotated cards?

I also thought about this myself. In my opinion, there should be a third constructed mode, with rotating sets, in a seasonal fashion, just like the arena nowadays. So, in an economic point of view, for Blizzard, I think it wouldn't be feasible...

I'm not sure how many people who constantly dust Wild cards would even be interested in playing anything outside of Standard anyway.  But this could be good or bad for Blizzard.  (For the sake of this post, I'm going to refer to this hypothetical new format as "Limited")

Bad:

• Yes, some players might complain that they dusted all their old cards, but that's not Blizzard's fault.  They would have made that choice on their own!
• Could feel like restricted access for newer players who don't have a lot of the older sets
• It may not attract a very wide base of players who are already fatigued on the game just from normal ladder play, making match-making take a long time, maybe not making for fair match-making either.

Good:

• If they wanted to redesign the Ladder experience, they could try something different in this mode first
• They could offer Wild packs as part of a monthly rewards system for climbing in this mode.  Offering a few Wild packs in rewards, especially if they are for Wild sets featured in the following month's lineup, could help alleviate some of the pain in the first two "Bad" bullet points.
• They could actually ban the use of certain cards each month as a way of balancing this mode and avoiding super OP combos.  They can't really do this in Wild since that'd basically be deleting a card from the game, but if a super strong Wild deck can be built that month in Limited because all the cards you need are in the monthly set list, hinder it with a few card bans to balance the mode that month.
• It may actually encourage some players to invest more in Wild packs if they 1) are newer and never opened a lot of them or 2) are missing some cards from old sets.  Example: I didn't play much during the GvG and TGT releases so I am missing a LOT of cards in those two sets.

In terms of the "using gold for Wild packs" thing... I've heard a few excuses such as "it's confusing for new players and frustrating for them if they buy packs they then can't use in Standard" or "the client can't handle it".  That second one I think is more mobile.  I personally see no reason why they couldn't make any Adventure or Wild set that is usable in Limited for that month available in in-game shops for gold during that month!

I've thought about this many times before as this idea keeps coming up in various forums.  Would the new mode be a huge money maker for Blizzard on it's own?  Probably not.  But do they need a new game mode or two to help keep interest in the game up to continue making money in general?  Yes, they probably do.

Quote From jainaishot

Quote From SunbleachedAngel

How about they don't make 90% of the set garbage and then the rest 10% broken so decks buld themselves

While this will be downvoted to oblivion, it is actually true...

Metas are completely figured out in 2 weeks after the expansion,  and the game becomes completely stale in the first month.

The only way to combat this is by making at least half of the expansion playable and add completixity and variety to the game. This is where many people make the false assumption that the problem is the lack of new cards. The game as card game, is and has been utter shit, because every match will play the same and against the same decks. Even if there many viable decks almost all of them will be confined in a 2 to 3 archetypes. So you basically have 2 to 3 decks that play the same but have different collours.

As long as:

1)you cannot react during the opponents turn

2)the decks are too shallow and are figured out by everyone after a couple of games

3) the majority of cards are utter garbage

the game will be in a constant stale phase with some breaks during expansion.

But this will not change, nor they will listen to "patch" fixes  like op's because hs is not a card game but a mobile game with cards, and it's damm good in that perspective The formula works and it brings them a fortune so why they should change it? 

2 weeks? How about 2 day

No way old set cards are coming back for month so that is why Wild exists.

What I would like to see is instead of 3 expansions with 130+ cards a year, do two normal expansions and 3 or 4 mini-sets of 20-30 cards. The mini-sets would came out maybe a month after the last release.