"I'd like us to be a little bit more data informed on the kinds of things our global audience think is cool. We have some gut opinions on that obviously but we could do better research. We're trying to now."
I get that as a business, Team 5 inspired to cater towards what makes money, but I'd be far more excited if Dean said they were developing something cool that the TEAM wanted to do. Something specific and niche and cool that the developers got excited about, not something 'for everyone'.
Also, I guess my hopes for GvG 2 this year are dashed. I am sad :c
It is really sad that the warrior quest had its focus on pirates when it should have been focused on managerie. They already had a bridge card in Tent Trasher and a big payoff card in N'zoth. But of course let's not give any real support to midrange or control ( outside of a useless Paladin quest and way too slow priest quest). Aggro needs more love obviously. Meanwhile, we have to live with this crap until team 5 eventually and reluctantly has to admit to their mistake. Don't worry though guys it won't happen anytime soon as someone else at Blizzard just reminded Dean again how good he is at designing cards!
Because of the lack of diversity once you reach Diamond ranks, I often just play to Diamond and then goof around with weird decks and sometimes I have success with them. Like the Odd Big Demons DH deck I built and briefly played a little bit ago. Looking at my stats in HDT right now it is actually 9-4 some how. LOL
This is something they've been doing pretty consistently lately: creating effects that should not exist. It doesn't matter what mana cost you slap on top of it. If it's sufficiently broken, it will find a way to be relevant. To list a few:
Hunter Questline - recreating the Raza Anduin effect, which also should not exist, but making it even faster...facepalm Warlock Questline - turning a class' downside into its win condition Warrior Questline - giving infinite value and infinite damage to an aggro deck...facedesk Shaman Questline - doubling from-hand burn damage in a from-hand burn deck...all in favour of interactivity! Darkglare - cause mana cheating was never an issue...facewall Incanter's Flow - cause mana cheating was never...sigh Runed Mithril Rod - cause mana chea....really? You nerfed it twice and it still sees play, devs, doesn't that tell you something? Stealer of Souls - cause mana... Celestial Alignment - cause...HOW MANY TIMES DO YOU NEED TO LEARN THIS LESSON? Parachute Brigand - apparently having Pirates start the game with +1/+1 on their first minion in Neutral wasn't stupid enough, so they doubled down on the stupid (literally, you can run twice the number of Parachute Brigands than you do Patches and they're twice as large)
Then there are the smaller offenders like: Polkelt - tutoring, except it also tutors for the rest of the game if you build your deck right Samuro - one-sided board-clear that generates board presence= so fun Flurgl+Tox - one-sided board-clear that...forget it Snowfall Guardian - board-stall that generates one-sided board presence...what an interesting twist on the formula!
I could go on. Pretty much the only way these effects become balanced is if the meta becomes such that those strategies are either too slow to remain competitive (the problem is not fixed, it's just hidden behind a fast meta...you can expect Questline Shaman to resurface the moment the meta slows down by about 1.5 turns) or there are even more broken ways to achieve the same effect (Darkglare vs Stealer of Souls vs Runed Mithril Rod).
And that's not even talking about the other broken shit that can be fine in theory but not with the mana cost they gave it (e.g. Raise Dead, Animated Broomstick etc.).
I can't believe I've never saw this topic before, hahaha.
I've been reading a lot of sci fi and fantasy lately and there are some I'd really like to reccomend.
- Baudolino, by Umberto Eco; Baudolino, a peasant-born boy, has a gift for learning languages and telling lies, and these talents made him "create" some of the most powerful motifs of the Medieval Era, like the Holy Grail, Presbyter Johannes etc.;
- "Tigana", by Guy-Gavriel Kay: a fantasy clearly inspired by the principles exposed by Machiavel in "The Prince";
- "The Girl With All the Gifts", by M. R. Carey (there's a prequel, The Boy on the Bridge, but I didn't read it yet): zombie apocapypse sci fi never was a favorite of mine, but this book is amazing;
- the "Temeraire" series (9 books, closed), by Naomi Novik: imagine the Napoleonic Wars, add dragons to the plot and voilà!
- "Gather the Daughters", Jenny Melamed: in my opinion this one makes "The Handmaid's Tale" weep in silence in a dark corner.
NebuchadnezzarHS, how about you complete my achievements and RT for me? 😅😁
Been lagging behind this expansion coz the achievement bugs put me off achievement hunting 🤦♀️
@Caro: For a moment, I was seriously considering your suggestion and it further proves that I have a Hearthstone addiction. However, even before Mercenaries was launched I had already abandoned my four F2P accounts to reduce my overall Hearthstone playtime (slightly) and also because I was not getting those sweet Challenge a Friend! quests frequently enough. In short, I think it is unwise for me to complete your XP achievements and Rewards Track, but I am very flattered that you thought I would be sufficiently trustworthy to wield your Battle.net account on your behalf 😇 Good luck with gathering all that XP, I believe you can do it just as fine!
I am still sitting comfortably at level 400, lol. Killing time by saving up all the highest grossing XP quests for the next Rewards Track.
I just started playing it and seems really nice. Might look like HS but it's really not. There are different layers of complexity to it that make it fresh and interesting.
Now, has anyone played enough of it to know if it's playable without paying any money even later down the road? I.e. not becoming frustrating and such.
I’m convinced the pirate warrior quest would see play even without Rokara as it would still be a 1 mana tutor for Ancharrr and 4 random damage which is still quite powerful.
Konami is a known notorious game company, plenty of bad reputations and obviously the case with Kojima. I've read some of the bad things they've done (source:Kotaku), and so I'm only guessing that the generous part didn't come from Konami, more like the game developer itself.
I was hoping some game I'd played in the past will still be there, or at least not under Konami anymore, like Silent Hills, Castlevania, and this. Because I had this feeling, when the company is bad, the devs probably won't stay for a very long time.
I played 10 games of Wild the other day after hitting D5 in Standard, and 9 of them were against Questline Pirate Warrior. Small sample size, but very off-putting.
Our Mercenaries data isn't perfect right now. There's certain relationships that haven't been made in the data (Mercs data spans many different points in the client) and our process doesn't allow for a manual intervention. I'd love to get some time to give it a look at again, other things are just taking priority.
This is very true, and if you look at something like Questline Hunter it’s very consistent as well. Compared to Reno Priest with the combo, Quest Hunter always has its Raza + Anduin type hero power combo enabler start in hand while most of its deck is interchangeable damage spells.
Quest Warrior definitely having an oppressive impact on the meta. It's so consistent. With other quests, you can brick draw or whatever, but by tutoring out more draw (pirates/weapons) and having the quest go face if your opponent doesn't have a strong board? It has no downside.
There are decks that can beat it, but none of those are as consistent as what they're trying to counter.
Mobalytics uses deck trackers for top ranked players.
Pretty sure the stats are fine…
Many streamers and pro player like Sunny, FreshLobster and eMOEtional have said that Mobanalytics database is not up to date and switched to other sources. Hell even if you look at archetype section of Mobanalytics you will notice that they align with the date from of both masteringruneterra and runeterraar :
Mogwai, swim pretty much all the top players have said bandle city is a problem and they got flamed for it.
Mogwai and Swim are saying that Bandle City is a OP region that's a statement that not many are going to disagree with and they didn't get flamed for it, both of their rants on the region have been positively received on both Reddit and YT.
But more importantly saying that X region is OP is not the same as you claiming that control is dead even thought Darkness Control boast some the highest win and play rate currently on the ladder, or that champion centric decks are dead even when best decks on the ladder like Sivir/Akshan Pyke/Rek'ai Senna/Veigar Yummi/Pantheon and all the Gnar decks are using those champions as their main win con.
Anyway glad to see that you haven't changed much, coming up with inaccurate hot takes and going all passive aggressive when anyone point out your mistakes.
most of the standard nerfs everytime are on control/combo decks (the last nerf to warrior quest is been done just because most of the playerbase at low ranks was complaining)..... plus all new cards added everytime make more sinergy with each others and this make games last less and give advantage to aggro, its normal and its the same in every card game.
it can't be helped, even in standard the most played archetype is aggro ( its cheaper, easier to play ecc.) a bounch of nerf to the most popular aggro decks would be really useless imho (meaby i'm wrong) for exemple in wild i'm actually using a rogue aggro deck not so much popular and i'm destroying pratically everything i match https://hearthstone-decks.net/aggro-rogue-69-legend-jogenthylacoleo/ (the list)
Happy Little Trees
Do this: 1941 5495 10490 surround each of these numbers with cardimg
You can get these numbers from https://outof.cards/search/?query=Treant&type=card
Click on the pages for each different treant, then in the url you can see the id.
Dean Ayala’s Hearthstone Q&A Recap #39 - No Year-long Story in 2022, Less OTK and Hand-wide Cost Reduction, & More!
No one asking about QA? Sad.
Other
### Secret Paladin
# Class: Paladin
# Format: Wild
#
# 2x (1) Avenge
# 2x (1) Competitive Spirit
# 2x (1) Never Surrender!
# 2x (1) Oh My Yogg!
# 2x (1) Redemption
# 2x (1) Secretkeeper
# 2x (2) Injured Tol'vir
# 2x (2) Shielded Minibot
# 2x (2) Sunreaver Spy
# 2x (2) Sword of the Fallen
# 1x (3) Commander Rhyssa
# 2x (3) Crossroads Gossiper
# 2x (4) Call to Arms
# 2x (4) Rally!
# 1x (5) Lorekeeper Polkelt
# 2x (6) Mysterious Challenger
#
AAEBAYfcBAKUmgP21gMOjAGeAeoP2BSmFfjSAo6aA9KlA4PeA/vjA87rA6vsA8igBNCgBAA=
#
# To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone
Star Ascendant Uther
Year of the Gryphon
Dean Ayala’s Hearthstone Q&A Recap #39 - No Year-long Story in 2022, Less OTK and Hand-wide Cost Reduction, & More!
"I'd like us to be a little bit more data informed on the kinds of things our global audience think is cool. We have some gut opinions on that obviously but we could do better research. We're trying to now."
I get that as a business, Team 5 inspired to cater towards what makes money, but I'd be far more excited if Dean said they were developing something cool that the TEAM wanted to do. Something specific and niche and cool that the developers got excited about, not something 'for everyone'.
Also, I guess my hopes for GvG 2 this year are dashed. I am sad :c
Dean Ayala’s Hearthstone Q&A Recap #39 - No Year-long Story in 2022, Less OTK and Hand-wide Cost Reduction, & More!
What did he mean by this?
Archetype Diversity in Hearthstone's Wild Format - A Meta Discussion
It is really sad that the warrior quest had its focus on pirates when it should have been focused on managerie. They already had a bridge card in Tent Trasher and a big payoff card in N'zoth. But of course let's not give any real support to midrange or control ( outside of a useless Paladin quest and way too slow priest quest). Aggro needs more love obviously. Meanwhile, we have to live with this crap until team 5 eventually and reluctantly has to admit to their mistake. Don't worry though guys it won't happen anytime soon as someone else at Blizzard just reminded Dean again how good he is at designing cards!
Dean Ayala is Hearthstone's Interim Game Director
Update: He did do a Q&A!
Archetype Diversity in Hearthstone's Wild Format - A Meta Discussion
Because of the lack of diversity once you reach Diamond ranks, I often just play to Diamond and then goof around with weird decks and sometimes I have success with them. Like the Odd Big Demons DH deck I built and briefly played a little bit ago. Looking at my stats in HDT right now it is actually 9-4 some how. LOL
you tube drop tomorrow?
You should get them nearly immediately after fulfilling the required watching hours.
Just make sure while watching that you've not muted youtube and keep it active, which means not having it in a tab while youre doing something else.
Yu-Gi-Oh Master Duel Reaches 20 Million Downloads - Everyone Gets 1000 Gems To Celebrate
How many absolute total collectible cards are there (x3) in game?
I think it's going to take forever to make a deck in this mechanic maze.
you tube drop tomorrow?
Hey, I just linked my account and am looking for drops for the first time. When should I expect my packs?
Archetype Diversity in Hearthstone's Wild Format - A Meta Discussion
This is something they've been doing pretty consistently lately: creating effects that should not exist. It doesn't matter what mana cost you slap on top of it. If it's sufficiently broken, it will find a way to be relevant. To list a few:
Hunter Questline - recreating the Raza Anduin effect, which also should not exist, but making it even faster...facepalm
Warlock Questline - turning a class' downside into its win condition
Warrior Questline - giving infinite value and infinite damage to an aggro deck...facedesk
Shaman Questline - doubling from-hand burn damage in a from-hand burn deck...all in favour of interactivity!
Darkglare - cause mana cheating was never an issue...facewall
Incanter's Flow - cause mana cheating was never...sigh
Runed Mithril Rod - cause mana chea....really? You nerfed it twice and it still sees play, devs, doesn't that tell you something?
Stealer of Souls - cause mana...
Celestial Alignment - cause...HOW MANY TIMES DO YOU NEED TO LEARN THIS LESSON?
Parachute Brigand - apparently having Pirates start the game with +1/+1 on their first minion in Neutral wasn't stupid enough, so they doubled down on the stupid (literally, you can run twice the number of Parachute Brigands than you do Patches and they're twice as large)
Then there are the smaller offenders like:
Polkelt - tutoring, except it also tutors for the rest of the game if you build your deck right
Samuro - one-sided board-clear that generates board presence= so fun
Flurgl+Tox - one-sided board-clear that...forget it
Snowfall Guardian - board-stall that generates one-sided board presence...what an interesting twist on the formula!
I could go on. Pretty much the only way these effects become balanced is if the meta becomes such that those strategies are either too slow to remain competitive (the problem is not fixed, it's just hidden behind a fast meta...you can expect Questline Shaman to resurface the moment the meta slows down by about 1.5 turns) or there are even more broken ways to achieve the same effect (Darkglare vs Stealer of Souls vs Runed Mithril Rod).
And that's not even talking about the other broken shit that can be fine in theory but not with the mana cost they gave it (e.g. Raise Dead, Animated Broomstick etc.).
Books
I can't believe I've never saw this topic before, hahaha.
I've been reading a lot of sci fi and fantasy lately and there are some I'd really like to reccomend.
- Baudolino, by Umberto Eco; Baudolino, a peasant-born boy, has a gift for learning languages and telling lies, and these talents made him "create" some of the most powerful motifs of the Medieval Era, like the Holy Grail, Presbyter Johannes etc.;
- "Tigana", by Guy-Gavriel Kay: a fantasy clearly inspired by the principles exposed by Machiavel in "The Prince";
- "The Girl With All the Gifts", by M. R. Carey (there's a prequel, The Boy on the Bridge, but I didn't read it yet): zombie apocapypse sci fi never was a favorite of mine, but this book is amazing;
- the "Temeraire" series (9 books, closed), by Naomi Novik: imagine the Napoleonic Wars, add dragons to the plot and voilà!
- "Gather the Daughters", Jenny Melamed: in my opinion this one makes "The Handmaid's Tale" weep in silence in a dark corner.
Rewards Track Progress: 4.0
@Caro: For a moment, I was seriously considering your suggestion and it further proves that I have a Hearthstone addiction. However, even before Mercenaries was launched I had already abandoned my four F2P accounts to reduce my overall Hearthstone playtime (slightly) and also because I was not getting those sweet Challenge a Friend! quests frequently enough. In short, I think it is unwise for me to complete your XP achievements and Rewards Track, but I am very flattered that you thought I would be sufficiently trustworthy to wield your Battle.net account on your behalf 😇 Good luck with gathering all that XP, I believe you can do it just as fine!
I am still sitting comfortably at level 400, lol. Killing time by saving up all the highest grossing XP quests for the next Rewards Track.
New(?) card game
Hi folks!
Is anyone playing Skyweaver?
https://www.skyweaver.net/
I just started playing it and seems really nice. Might look like HS but it's really not. There are different layers of complexity to it that make it fresh and interesting.
Now, has anyone played enough of it to know if it's playable without paying any money even later down the road? I.e. not becoming frustrating and such.
Thanks!
Archetype Diversity in Hearthstone's Wild Format - A Meta Discussion
I’m convinced the pirate warrior quest would see play even without Rokara as it would still be a 1 mana tutor for Ancharrr and 4 random damage which is still quite powerful.
Archetype Diversity in Hearthstone's Wild Format - A Meta Discussion
Wild mode players (mostly Warlocks and Shamans) began to put a Skulking Geist in the decks to disrupt QL Hunters.
Yu-Gi-Oh Master Duel Reaches 20 Million Downloads - Everyone Gets 1000 Gems To Celebrate
Konami is a known notorious game company, plenty of bad reputations and obviously the case with Kojima. I've read some of the bad things they've done (source:Kotaku), and so I'm only guessing that the generous part didn't come from Konami, more like the game developer itself.
I was hoping some game I'd played in the past will still be there, or at least not under Konami anymore, like Silent Hills, Castlevania, and this. Because I had this feeling, when the company is bad, the devs probably won't stay for a very long time.
Archetype Diversity in Hearthstone's Wild Format - A Meta Discussion
I played 10 games of Wild the other day after hitting D5 in Standard, and 9 of them were against Questline Pirate Warrior. Small sample size, but very off-putting.
new mercenaries stats
Our Mercenaries data isn't perfect right now. There's certain relationships that haven't been made in the data (Mercs data spans many different points in the client) and our process doesn't allow for a manual intervention. I'd love to get some time to give it a look at again, other things are just taking priority.
Other
### Libram Paladin
# Class: Paladin
# Format: Wild
#
# 2x (1) Aldor Attendant
# 2x (1) Crystology
# 2x (1) Knight of Anointment
# 2x (2) City Tax
# 2x (2) Hand of A'dal
# 2x (2) Libram of Wisdom
# 2x (2) Ring of Courage
# 1x (3) Eydis Darkbane
# 1x (3) Lord Barov
# 2x (3) Stormwind Avenger
# 1x (4) Blademaster Samuro
# 1x (4) Cariel Roame
# 2x (5) Aldor Truthseeker
# 2x (5) Libram of Justice
# 1x (7) Lady Liadrin
# 2x (7) Libram of Judgment
# 1x (7) Lynessa Sunsorrow
# 2x (9) Libram of Hope
#
AAEBAdz5AwbXE+PjAoTBA5PQA/voA5HsAwzZ/gLKuAP9uAPquQPruQPsuQPKwQP94wPM6wOL+APMrATVrAQA
#
# To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone
Archetype Diversity in Hearthstone's Wild Format - A Meta Discussion
This is very true, and if you look at something like Questline Hunter it’s very consistent as well. Compared to Reno Priest with the combo, Quest Hunter always has its Raza + Anduin type hero power combo enabler start in hand while most of its deck is interchangeable damage spells.
Archetype Diversity in Hearthstone's Wild Format - A Meta Discussion
Quest Warrior definitely having an oppressive impact on the meta. It's so consistent. With other quests, you can brick draw or whatever, but by tutoring out more draw (pirates/weapons) and having the quest go face if your opponent doesn't have a strong board? It has no downside.
There are decks that can beat it, but none of those are as consistent as what they're trying to counter.
New Meta Breakdown
Many streamers and pro player like Sunny, FreshLobster and eMOEtional have said that Mobanalytics database is not up to date and switched to other sources. Hell even if you look at archetype section of Mobanalytics you will notice that they align with the date from of both masteringruneterra and runeterraar :
https://lor.mobalytics.gg/stats/archetypes
https://masteringruneterra.com/lor-meta-march-07/
https://runeterra.ar/stats
Mogwai and Swim are saying that Bandle City is a OP region that's a statement that not many are going to disagree with and they didn't get flamed for it, both of their rants on the region have been positively received on both Reddit and YT.
But more importantly saying that X region is OP is not the same as you claiming that control is dead even thought Darkness Control boast some the highest win and play rate currently on the ladder, or that champion centric decks are dead even when best decks on the ladder like Sivir/Akshan Pyke/Rek'ai Senna/Veigar Yummi/Pantheon and all the Gnar decks are using those champions as their main win con.
Anyway glad to see that you haven't changed much, coming up with inaccurate hot takes and going all passive aggressive when anyone point out your mistakes.
Archetype Diversity in Hearthstone's Wild Format - A Meta Discussion
most of the standard nerfs everytime are on control/combo decks (the last nerf to warrior quest is been done just because most of the playerbase at low ranks was complaining)..... plus all new cards added everytime make more sinergy with each others and this make games last less and give advantage to aggro, its normal and its the same in every card game.
it can't be helped, even in standard the most played archetype is aggro ( its cheaper, easier to play ecc.) a bounch of nerf to the most popular aggro decks would be really useless imho (meaby i'm wrong) for exemple in wild i'm actually using a rogue aggro deck not so much popular and i'm destroying pratically everything i match https://hearthstone-decks.net/aggro-rogue-69-legend-jogenthylacoleo/ (the list)