Tables, A Way To Play Hearthstone With Your Own Rules.

Hello everyone, I'm back with another concept that allows us to have more ways to play Hearthstone. My last concept was Explorer, a format that bans cards on a monthly basis until it resets at the beginning of the new Hearthstone Year. Today I bring you Tables, a new way to play Hearthstone with your friends with your own rules. Such as hand size, starting health, deck size, and more with a little imagination. There's also some bonus stuff that I'm throwing in here as well that can apply. Again, if you see any flaws, have any questions, or just want to point something out that I didn't cover, please let me know. My designs are not perfect but we as a community can get Team 5's attention and tell them that we want something new.

Here we go.



Hearthstone is set in Harth's tavern somewhere in Azeroth.
The players are sat down at a table, in front of the Box and begin playing.
But what if we..... got up? And walked to a different table?
This is where Tables came from, the idea that other people are in this tavern, playing Hearthstone, by their own rules.
It's a pretty easy concept and pretty simple to implement.



Everyone is familiar with with the Modes button by now, and I felt that Tables fits right into that menu.
Choosing a tankard was appropriate because chances are if you're playing custom games, you're playing with friends.
Just click it and you'll be taken to the next menu.



Okay, I know I just gave you ALOT to look at and process, but these are the tables.

Before we talk about making your own rules and rule sets, I'm going to showcase some other ways to play.



Before we get started we have to address that with the implementation of Tables, comes also the Deck Box system.
It's simple, you click the button, and select the corresponding rule set or mode you want it to be made for, and get to building.





Toki, Time-Tinker is moving to Wild in April and when she does, her Battlecry won't make much sense.
She didn't see serious play when she was in Standard and definitely won't in Wild, so why not give her a Table to herself?



Toki's Tables of Time allows players to visit old, end of year metas of the past.
Just select the mode and what year, and get to playing!





Two Headed Ogre is pretty straight forward.

Hearthstone Mathematics made a video showcasing what a 2V2 mode would look like.



Iksar even commented on the mode but this was right before Battlegrounds was announced, so maybe people have forgotten about it?




Tournaments Grounds is essentially Tournament Mode but now it has a home in Table.

It makes sense really.
What if a bunch of players got together, established rules, card bans, and the like and started a Tournament?
What if other players like their rule set and wanted to mimic it?
We'll get to that soon. ;)




Endless Adventure is basically an endless Dungeon Run, but with rewards.
It uses all of them, intertwined if you'd like.
Dungeon Run, Monster Hunt, Rumble Run, Dalaran Heist, and Tombs of Terror.

A free version of it will be available to all players to play whenever they want.
New Treasures and ways to modify/remove cards from your deck should be implemented.
Rewards should be given when beating boss number "x" and so on.

A paid version, with either gold or your local currency, is available to those who think they can get really far.
Rewards will be increased as well.



For Tournament Grounds and Endless Adventure, I went and I had to brainstorm for rewards that are worthy of players' time.

I came up with two new rewards called Pack Tokens and Pack Sleeves.

Pack Tokens are exactly what they sound like.
They are equivalent to 100 Gold and buy you a pack.
The difference is that you can use these to buy whatever pack you want instead of the game choosing for you.




Pack Sleeves are a tool players can use to guarantee that they'll open a Legendary or Epic card.

Any pack can be used with these, and most importantly, you don't have to use them right away.
That means you can save them, and when an expansion comes out, if you want to use them all at once, go for it.
Now of course these aren't going to be easy to obtain, but hey, they're still neat.

The way these work internally is that once the pack is slid in, it chooses a Common rarity card and changes it before you open the pack.

Now enough waiting around, let's talk about making your own rules.
You select "Your Table" and are presented with a menu that allows you to browse individual rules and build them into a rule set.
You give it a name and description and start diving into individual rules that apply within.

Focus on the left side first.

The game needs to know what set restrictions you'd like to have.
Current Standard set?
How about all of Wild?
Do you want to modify what was allowed in Year of the Mammoth?

Let's pick Standard for Simplicity.
Now we have to list sets that are in use, this will default to whatever was allowed within the time you chose.
If you want to ban a particular set, now you can.
What would it look like if only (all of) Witchwood, Rastakhan's Rumble, and Descent of Dragons were allowed?
No Classic or Basic sets either.

Now that we have that out of the way, let's ban some cards, and maybe even some classes.
We'll get rid of every Galakrond card plus what ever cards synergize with him.
We'll also ban Embiggen and Necrium Apothecary.
You know what? Since Genn Greymane and Baku the Mooneater are here I'm gonna ban Paladin and Shaman as well, these are MY rules after all.

On the right you can see other rules that are not active until you click "Add Custom Rules".
Then you can peruse you own ideas or other players ideas and throw them into the rule set.
At the bottom of the extra rules slider will be an option to actually make other rules, I just couldn't find an appealing UI design.

Rule sets and Rules are shareable similarly to how we share deck codes.

Here's a mock up of a completed Rule Set

"Play" is where you would go if you wanted to play against random players against other players' rule sets, or maybe even a rule set made by a Blizzard employee.

Think of it as a game browser.

Issues, Solutions, and Outcomes.

Issues

Probably the biggest one that will be called out is that it dilutes the player base which is understandable.
Players claim that the wait times for Wild are long enough as it is and more formats or game modes would make it even longer.

Does Tables of Time have longevity?

What if rules conflict with each other?

How will Tavern Brawl be affected?

Replayability

Taverns of Time could be the largest victim of this. I'm not sure how many long time players will dive into old, figured out metas.
But the option is still there for people who would like to dive in.

Solutions

Rules should be made to where if two rules conflict they can't exist in the same rule set. This should be a fail safe that's implemented by Team 5.

As for dilution of the player base, Team 5 should create more incentives to encourage players to branch out into different formats and modes with quests.
They've done it in the past, they just need to do it more often.

To me, Tavern Brawl is more of a stepping stone if anything.
It's existed for several years now and I think it's time to retire it and/or move it into Tables.
It's honestly a perfect fit as well.

Outcomes

I think in general most players will like the idea that they can make their own rules and share them with the Hearthstone community.

Dilution of the player base is a possibility but I firmly believe in having a split player base is better than a non-existent one.

I made this Mode because people were telling me how awesome it would be to have the ability to make their own rules.
So I made a concept that Team 5 should look at and consider.

Once again, if I overlooked anything, didn't explain something entirely, or if you are confused about something just ask.


As always, thank you for reading,
-Grif

Damn. 

This is REALLY good - I hope some of the devs are lurking because literally any of this would be a welcome addition to the game.

Quote From ArngrimUndying

Damn. 

This is REALLY good - I hope some of the devs are lurking because literally any of this would be a welcome addition to the game.

Thank you, I posted it on Reddit as well. I just hope it doesn't die in "new"

Somebody give this man a job on Team 5!!

Tables of Time is the number 1 game mode that I have been wanting for years!

Quote From Fluxflashor

SIGN ME UP!

I Mean, I'm sure you know a guy who can pitch this idea. ;)

Quote From Xarkkal

Somebody give this man a job on Team 5!!

 

Tables of Time is the number 1 game mode that I have been wanting for years!

I'm not even asking for a job, I'm just asking for a conversation, but thank you for the enthusiasm.

I think it's important that we have the ability to play with our cards outside the gaping maw that is Wild. Wild only changes when nerfs occur, and if you ask anyone, that's a problem.

Great job on the article, Grif!

This is very interesting but having all of these vastly different ideas and gamemodes in one place is super cluttered, and clutter is something Blizzard is trying to avoid at all costs.

I think it's better if we start 1 at a time, tournament mode would probably be the first one we should go for in my opinion.

Another problem is splitting the playerbase, the game already has issues with wait times in Wild Legend. Adding this many extra gamemodes and ways to split up the game will do nothing but exasperate that problem.

We just got Battlegrounds as well, that's a full gamemode with its own team and updates. It'll probably be a while before they can consider adding a new one.

Quote From CivilKobold

This is very interesting but having all of these vastly different ideas and gamemodes in one place is super cluttered, and clutter is something Blizzard is trying to avoid at all costs.

I think it's better if we start 1 at a time, tournament mode would probably be the first one we should go for in my opinion.

Another problem is splitting the playerbase, the game already has issues with wait times in Wild Legend. Adding this many extra gamemodes and ways to split up the game will do nothing but exasperate that problem.

We just got Battlegrounds as well, that's a full gamemode with its own team and updates. It'll probably be a while before they can consider adding a new one.

It's not a perfect UI design, but I work with what I got. It could definitely be improved.

One game mode at a time would work since it gives people enough time to adjust to and understand the rules of each mode.

So I'm aware of the Wild wait times, and I get it. I often ask myself why that is, it could be from the lack of support on Team 5's side letting OP decks/combos exist for so long before balancing them. Or sometimes I think that people just don't like it because of the samey-ness. Once a card is there, it's there forever, it doesn't rotate anywhere. Whatever OP strategy is plaguing the Wild meta will continue to do so until either a balance patch or an even more OP combo comes out after a new expansion. But that paragraph doesn't address your point, it's just how I try to think of it at a different angle, and that's not fair to you.

So splitting the player base is something I'm kind of fine with for the time being, if we had an accurate player count from Blizzard I'd reconsider based on the data. The reason I'm okay with splitting the player base is because people want options, let's use WoW and WoW Classic. Back in Warlords of Draenor players were talking about being able to play in classic servers, Blizzard just refused and didn't take them seriously. At the same time fan projects like Project Nostalrius were beginning to become a popular alternative. With the decline in player numbers (Data is old but still relevant at time of this all happening) for official WoW servers becoming a real thing, and Private Servers starting to really get attention and players (not more than what WoW had but still nothing to sneeze at) it was obvious what Blizzard needed to do. They shut down Project Nostalrius and lo and behold Classic WoW released not long ago. Unfortunately we don't have access to the current numbers (I can't find them) so we don't know how well any Blizzard title is really doing. But we can assume that those players have returned for a little bit longer.

With all that above being said, that's my way of thinking on the matter of splitting/diluting the playerbase. They may not be playing Standard, Wild, Arena, or Battlegrounds, but they are playing Hearthstone.

Quote From anchorm4n

Really great concept, I like it a lot!

I'm a little skeptical on two points, though. Maybe you can explain your thoughts on those some more?

1) "Your table" Match-making / duration of games
Say I create my own table. It then ends up in a potentially reeeeeeeeally long list of tables until someone chooses to play with me. Next my opponent has to fully grasp my rules and build a deck which meets those rules. So between creating or even publishing my table and actually starting a game quite some time will pass... like... 5-10 minutes or something? That doesn't sound healthy for the game mode. The bright side is that this shouldn't be a problem for the other modes. But "your table" sure as hell looks veeeeery sexy in concept and might end up being really annoying because of the points I tried to make.

2) New rewards
I don't really get the point of the new rewards. A pack token is nothing else than 100 gold which can't be spent for entry fees. And while pack sleeves look like something one could really be excited about (I mean who DOESN'T hate pack rng?), I fear it could tip the scales too far in a pay2win direction (obviously dependend of how they were to be obtained). The point is, you might end up enlarging the gap between f2p-players and p2w-players. Right now, everybody can climb the ladder and get bigger rewards. If you hide those new rewards behind an entry fee, you lower the accessability to the probably best rewards in the game. I don't have an easy solution for this, but maybe we might avoid the problem by just simply sticking to the usual rewards of cards / dust / gold / packs and increasing their volume according to the players achievements.
(Side note: that's why european soccer is so boring. The big guys always go to the Champions League and then earn the big money which helps them securing their claims the next season. The only way to avoid this is to outrun the market by flooding the competition with money like the English Premierleague does. I very much prefer the Americans drafting systems and salary caps but don't see how they could be implemented in soccer or HS.)

Thanks for your efforts, this truely great work!

1: This one is going to be difficult and and I'm glad you pointed it out. So the overall point of "Your Table" is to establish your own rule sets, and publish them to the players of Hearthstone. Post the Rule Set code on OutOfCards, Reddit, Hearthpwn, wherever you feel like it would be seen most. If enough people see they may jump into matchmaking with a crafted deck specifically for your rules, however this is also dependent on how much people actually want to play your rule set. If ALOT of players enjoy it, it could be featured for a week or so on the splash page of the game browser granting a high number of player volume within that mode. Then after it's no longer featured, people who have it bookmarked can go back into match making and specifically look for "Your Table".

If I wanted, I could set;
Max Health=Unlimited
Starting Hand Size=7
Deck Size≥60
Starting Health=20
Common Duplicate Limit=4
Rare Duplicate Limit=3
Epic Duplicate Limit=2
Legendary Duplicate Limit=1
Fatigue Damage=Infinite
Card Bans=Reno Jackson, Nozari.

And call it whatever but people know it's MTG. If people want to go back and play this, they most certainly will and they'll probably keep decks specifically for it.

Essentially it's mainly for your friends to fool around with, and maybe create some alternate metas just for funsies. So depending on how fun it is determines the likelihood of queue time. Think the Starcraft II Arcade in a way.

2: The pack token is there so F2P players don't have to worry about dipping into their gold savings when wanting to play Arena or Brawlesium. I've seen where people say they don't touch Arena because of the possibility of drafting a really bad deck because RNG was not on their side and essentially wasting 150 gold. So it's kind of a safety net.

So Pack Sleeves were just something I came up with because like you said, most people hate pack RNG. So I'm about to sound like an ass, but there will always be a huge split between F2P and P2W and there needs to be. The members of Team 5 gotta feed their families, pay there bills, and come up with ways to ensure that they keep their jobs. Creating incentives is a way to get someone who hasn't spent money on Hearthstone, to start. Obviously I spend money on Hearthstone and I sympathize with F2P players, but we also have to be realistic. F2P players can obtain 52 free packs a year from the Tavern Brawl and another 240 packs from saving up gold from completing daily quests, and I don't know how many more free packs from launch and promo events. F2P players are given the short end of the stick, but it's not as short as they think it is. I think the real issue lies in the atrocious Dust economy, but that discussion is for another time and another Thread.

I put the Tokens and Sleeves there because there needs to be more rewards, and they give you control over your rewards which is the most important aspect of them. Imagine going to Dave N' Busters or Chuck E' Cheese, obtaining a large amount of tickets, going to the prize counter, and the attendant just giving you random stuff, that's how ALL of Hearthstone's (FEW) rewards feel like. Giving players an amount of control is big, but also fair, and unfortunately has to come with a cost. I hoard Gold all the way up to an expansion and spend it all on new packs and, to me Dust is useless because I honestly feel like I'm being robbed whenever I craft or disenchant a card.

Anyway, thank you for your input, now I got another thing to think about lol.

Have 0 faith in blizzard, specially now that Mike and Peter are out, I doubt they will make anything new, and specially with all the bad decisions and management in the company. 

What you are suggesting is a custom mode it's a nice idea but it's blizzard, they are so slow to create new stuff and when they do it's infested with bugs... And don't get optimistic with any rewards... 

Quote From Demonxz95

DAMN, you put a lot of effort into this. I love it.

Thank you for reading it!

It took a hot minute to make but I’m glad I finally got it out there

Quote From DoubleSummon

Have 0 faith in blizzard, specially now that Mike and Peter are out, I doubt they will make anything new, and specially with all the bad decisions and management in the company. 

What you are suggesting is a custom mode it's a nice idea but it's blizzard, they are so slow to create new stuff and when they do it's infested with bugs... And don't get optimistic with any rewards... 

I don't think Mike and Peter leaving will have much of a negative impact on Hearthstone. These guys were on the team when people were asking for tournament mode and they just didn't deliver on it. Instead they made an Auto-Battler clone in 6 months, hopefully fresh eyes and new people can change the developmental direction for the better.

The rewards are there to show that they can be expanded upon in the game besides the run of the mill still we've been getting. During this who Warcraft 3: Refunded debacle I don't expect much from Blizzard in terms of actual effort, but that doesn't mean the community can't be in Team 5's ear telling them what we want regardless if they listen or not.

I don't agree with your pessimism, but I understand.

Great work!

If blizzard came to you and said they could only do one of these ideas, but you could pick, what would you pick?

Quote From SaltyMcNulty

Great work!

If blizzard came to you and said they could only do one of these ideas, but you could pick, what would you pick?

I think “Your Table” and “Play” would be best for the whole Hearthstone community. Allows players with limited collections to go into Formats like Pauper and still be on an even playing field.

Personally I’d really like for my other concept, Explorer, to be implemented since it changes often enough to keep the game feeling fresh.

I think they are great ideas, and I have an idea how to overcome the lack of people for some mode.

Imagine you could see a live counter as to how many people are now live playing each mode and how many are in queue.

Then you could get an idea of the possible wait time and decide if you really want to queue into that.

This is like an improved version of the current estimate you see AFTER you queue.

Quote From Zwane

I think they are great ideas, and I have an idea how to overcome the lack of people for some mode.

Imagine you could see a live counter as to how many people are now live playing each mode and how many are in queue.

Then you could get an idea of the possible wait time and decide if you really want to queue into that.

This is like an improved version of the current estimate you see AFTER you queue.

I think there needs to be more incentives, such as pack tokens and pack sleeves, in the form of a weekly quest. "Play X amount of games in Endless Explorer/Two Headed Ogre/etc. during the week." would encourage players to keep coming back and checking into the mode beyond the daily quest grind. Also a monthly quest would be welcomed as well.

Unfortunately, Blizzard doesn't really report their numbers anymore (not that I can find) and probably for good reason. If people have that kind of information, they can use it to say "X is dead, abandon the game now before it's shut down". On the flip side of that, you can look at Heroes of the Storm which was a very fun game with an even more active community, if those numbers were public when they " killed" the game people would be raiding the forums saying "HotS had X amount of players and Blizzard just abandoned them, Hearthstone/WoW/Diablo/Overwatch is next!".

I think just having a wait time would be fine, but it goes back into that negative feedback loop. "Not many players playing that mode? I guess I'll play a different mode then." That continues until people just randomly start playing it.

I'd really like to have access to those numbers, along with Standard, Wild, Battlegrounds, and Arena's populations as well that way we can truly see what might happen if we split the playerbase further.

This is super cool and  incredibly well done thread.  I love the concept and I especially would like to see some previous years of standards play mode.  I miss some of the decks from the first year I started playing.  

nice article. 

similar to creating custom maps on WC3 (even if Blizzard owns it all now).

would be great if the rules on custom table get simplified, so when other player joins, they're not wasting any time understanding it.

such as buttons, or icons. like ♥=15, or HPower=false, or even better, a premade custom rules, for easy pick.

cards collections banning should be trimmed too, like very tiny card icons, or tags (need more tags to be useful, like gnomes, kobolds, undeads, treants, etc).

remove the rewards, since this mode is just for fun, and this mode is just a place to go when players are bored with either plays or BG (like BG F2P). And Pack Tokens / Sleeves just ruining the balance of golds. One currency is more than enough.

adding passwords to private tables, and chatting room is essential, but that's the main problem, since hearthstone don't utilize it.

and the last one will be contacting blizzard team 5 about this new modes. That's it. It'll be a good addition to Hearthstone nonetheless.

This looks amazing! You must put a lot of time and effort!

A few weeks ago, Team 5 released a video asking for ideas for formats and modes from the community, asking us what we'd like to see in the game. There is no official way to go about this other than Tweeting them or posting in their official forums. On April the 14th, Team 5 is hosting an AMA to respond to our questions. I'd like for your help to get this to not only get their attention, but to get them to respond to this idea.

This is our opportunity, to not only get this in the face of the developers but to get more people behind this concept. I'll be posting this forum link in the AMA and I'd like for you guys to help by simply upvoting it.

I like the idea of this thread. To me though you have laid out at least two (up to four) separate things that I think are real possibilites for hearthstone.

1. Custom Tournaments - will happen eventually

2. The evolution of Tavern Brawls. We have seen one evolution of tavern brawls (extending their time). The next evolution is to merge your tables idea with the concept of the brawl and community/dev curation. The next evolution of brawls will be several concurrent brawls at different "tables".

• The Weekly Blast from the Past - A table for your "standard of the past" based format.
• The Weekly Alternative History Brawl - A table for a unique combination of "X" cards sets from the Past. 
• Gamblers Table - A table for past and potentially new Random deck brawls.
• Developer's Choice - A table for new and past Brawls of the developers choice. 
• Wanderer's House Rules - Two different tables for community created rule sets. The current list of officially submitted rule sets (in browser maybe?) would be accessible for community voting with weekly winners being granted the next two slots.

The idea of expanding the Tavern Brawl mode just makes sense as it has a similar purpose, providing new and exciting ways to play. It also improves player pool issue as well as ensuring people don't have to wait around for someone to challenge them to their cool new rule set idea. There could also be an option to include the option of Heroic Brawl status for one of these brawls a week (for those most competitive of heart).

3. The 2v2 Game Option - Not a bad idea, long way from being a polished solution. But I would love a permanent option for co-op. Hard to prevent friends from having a massive advantage or randoms though. And it might kill half the fun if you could kill the advantage anyway.

4. The Endless Dungeon Run - This sounds like an awesome start to a permanent single player mode, however the implementation of this will be really, really tricky. The amount of thought needed to endlessly extend a survival style dungeoneering style PVE sounds immense on the generous side and perhaps impossible.

Here's the comment guys, let's try to get their attention!

Quote From griffior

Here's the comment guys, let's try to get their attention!

I went and upvoted and commented! Fingers crossed they see this