FWIW folks responsible for game balance are not the same people that are developing new modes.
Look, I work in a Automotive OEM much much much bigger than Blizzard, I understand what you are saying in my company all the departments are “silos” every department is only responsible for their own thing. Now, if anyone identify any issue, concern, malfunction… can raise your findings to the executives, after that 2 things can happen, the executives just ignore you they are more concerned about schedules and objectives rather than product quality or they call you to explain what’s your findings and what is your proposal, all public companies works similar, if your department is not responsible for something doesn’t mean that you just have to ignore the problem. So if nothing is happening is because the executives doesn’t want or because the teams doesn’t give a fuck or because that questline situation is exactly what they want for the game at least for now.
by the way the dev is 100% responsible, they designed they questlines at the beginning, can’t they test it before before releasing? No they can’t because there is no PTR in the game, you know why there is no PTR before expansion release? Just imagine what will happen with the bundle pre-order if the people know the bullshit is about to come to hearthstone.
But don’t worry guys, in one month we are going to receive the mini set and in December the new expansion, that means in order to sell more pre-orders they need to nerf the whole quest package, or introduce something even more broken that outdates questlines o
I completely forgot that packs were originally listed as a launch celebration, damn, why time gotta full Sonic and go so fast?
Thanks for sharing the story about Greenskin, I can only imagine how awesome it must feel to complete the original classic set since I sure haven't been able to yet =D. Its always great to hear when people have good experiences!
Yes, yes and yes. There is no other way to "heal" Wild at the moment.
The amount of nerfing the questline would need in Wild to be balanced would likely make the card unplayable in Standard; I doubt they want to do that.
The easiest way to fix the problem is to ban The Demon Seed in Wild, like they did for Stealer of Souls. If they don't want to go that far, I think Crystallizer is the card to nerf instead.
Yeah its insane to me that people will complain about absolutely everything. Don't get me wrong, I've done my fair share of complaining in gaming over the years, and still do grumble about World of Warcraft at times, but it is so important that people realize you aren't the target audience for everything that goes into a game.
I think the most laughable is thinking that every player would enjoy every class. If you don't like the way Druid plays, don't play it, there are NINE other options out there with different playstyles. Like look at Duels, that was not meant to be a mode for every single player, yet, complaint city! We know there are still a ton of Duels players out there though with how much traffic some of our articles get for the mode so its great that Blizzard provided some players an avenue to continue to enjoy Hearthstone.
Mercenaries, and even Battlegrounds, is exactly that. A way to keep enjoying our favourite characters in a card game format.
Props for speaking up about this. I feel like it can be hard for people to get the courage to speak against haters, because haters bring energy and more haters with them. Maybe a challenge we need is for more of the unspoken gratitude to be spoken so the devs and community team can get some rest from the unrelenting torrent of aggressive criticism
I'm not sure we're going to see games past turn 10 any time soon: I think the only thing keeping the Priest questline in check is the other questlines finishing sooner.
That said, even making it to turn 10 would be an improvement; I'd like to be able to play Sheldras Moontree.
Agree wholeheartedly with this - loads of love is put into the game and sometimes it’s a little off-balance but that just makes it interesting for a while as they are now quick at addressing balance. The new mode looks really cool, and if you don’t like it then you don’t HAVE to play it, and the old adage of ‘if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything’ rings true. It seems like it’ll be pretty easy to progress in mercenaries without spending any money, based on info about the packs and the current level of free packs given out for standard, as well as heroes progressing based on exp. I dislike all the negativity too. TLDR; don’t buy the new bundles if you don’t want them, but give it a go when it’s out and you might just enjoy it
Yeah I'm always a huge fan of the constructed brawls, though that definitely doesn't mean random can be fun, I'd just love to not see it back-to-back-to-back lol. It would be cool to do a set of balance changes inside of brawl. I bet they'd have enough people messing around in it to get some really good data. I also know that they can buff or nerf cards server-side (the numbers show up green on the cards) so if they can also push out tech to only due that in Tavern Brawl, they wouldn't even need to patch the client to do a test like that.
One of my favorite things to remind people of when there are complaints about Tavern Brawls is this quote from the original announcement (emphasis mine):
"Tavern Brawls will have free admission when the new mode becomes available. As part of the launch celebration, you'll earn a free card pack when you win your first game of the week in the first several brawls!"
And here we are, 324 Tavern Brawls later, still earning a free pack (almost) every week. Until Classic packs stopped being a thing, I never needed to buy one due to the free pack I got every week. When I opened the last card I needed from Classic (golden Captain Greenskin), I was ecstatic. Plenty of people who haven't been playing as long don't realize that originally we were expecting 4-5 free packs, not the 300+ per player they've made available. Of course, I'd love to see more variations on Tavern Brawls, but I appreciate all the work the content team does, especially with Duels.
I agree that's the best way to deal with Crystallizer: it doesn't destroy the card (in fact it becomes better in most other decks) but it does limit its usefulness in questline Warlock to a point where it probably won't be included anymore.
What makes Crystallizer very powerful at the moment is not only how much it helps quest completion, but also that the damage + armor after completion makes it very hard for the opponent to win a damage race after quest completion.
i dont mind random, in tavern brawls from time to time, in fact i migth be only one that enjoys the chaos of the "servants of yogg saron" one ans similars xD , but gotta say, if ill have constructed tavern brawl, i would love to see more testing for posible new features, i had a lot of fun playing cthun decks again weeks ago, but the one i enjoyed the most was the chance to play my jade n'zoth shaman again, the one was one is one of my old favorite ones ever :D
With Book of Mercenaries being done, Book of Heroes possibly still being worked on (if it isn't finished yet internally)
Oops! It's the other way around. Just… wanted to say that. Not that I'm using it to derail your entire argument, I just though I should point that out.
I really liked the AMA where Dean talked about class bans on ladder. It would be really neat to see a Hearthstone-wide systems change for a couple of weeks just to see what improvements could potentially come to the game.
Really though, I think Hearthstone needs to get a Public Test Realm going. There are certainly potential issues with a PTR, depending on how they would handle it, but it would be a less disruptive way of testing stuff out. I too felt like Tavern Brawl was a great testing bed for stuff, its a shame they stopped using it that way and resorting more to just RANDOM ALL THE THINGS. Like we needed more random in Hearthstone, right?
Most importantly though, the developers deserve absolutely zero harassment.
Totally agree. And I'm saying that as a wild player who, well, isn't really playing as the game isn't fun for me and many others right now.
Mercenaries isn't a resource draining treadmill I'm going to get on, and I'd rather there was a option button to just disable everything related to it in the client. But if it is (or turns out to be) for you- enjoy! People like different things and there's nothing wrong about that.
I'm not going to say I'm thinking about quitting because it could sound like I think anyone else should care and cause Team 5 to have sleepless nights :P Hopefully the Hearthstone part of Hearthstone get's addressed better than it has soon.
Any kind of persistent reward is going to be good versus control. I think that similar to when Death Knights were in Standard, almost every control deck will have to run the questline itself.
Questline Shaman and Mage are indeed very powerful and may continue to be a problem for control decks.
Hunters can run out of resources, so if you can heal enough or put down minions they can't ignore, I think a control deck should be able to outlast them.
The Paladin questline currently seems the strongest when you play as many 1-drops as possible, but against control that's unlikely to be favored. If that deck is retooled to have more staying power, its quest completion will come later, which weakens it considerably against non-control decks. The more expensive cards are included, the more likely you'd be better off playing Handbuff instead.
the past constructed taver brawl felt like a test for a posible new costructed format, with specific sets viable, that would be cool, but the idea of balancing wild is more apealing for me at least, that way people could try its wacky or homebrew decks without dying that fast and those who love the degenerate broken/fast/apm stuff would still have its place to have fun in the eternal mode
Did you miss the part about the different teams thing?
Wow.
Most of the folks creating Art for Hearthstone are contracted to do so, they aren't even a part of the development team. There's a lead Artist type person that deals with all of them and makes sure stuff has that "Hearthstone" look and what they overall expected out of some art.
Yeah, a company is going to make money. Its actually embarrassing at how long it took Blizzard to step up the hero skin game when you look at how players for all those years were literally asking them to make more skins so they could buy them.
Now, I'm hungry and I've got finishing touches to put on everything I've been working on after Tuesday's huge patch and information drop. Can people behave like 30 minutes?
Also, generally speaking, Out of Cards is a much more positive place than other spots that Hearthstone gets discussed, though if you follow the right folks on Twitter and never look at mentions, there's much positivity to see there too. I'm damn serious about kicking people off our site if the only thing they want to do is be negative about the game. If you just want to spew non-constructive bullshit, reddit has a new discussion button that largely goes unmoderated.
It might be time for team5 to bite the bullet and simply admit that the stormwind quests as a whole are too powerful and too easily completed. I don't mind if the rewards are powerful, but it should at least be hard to complete, or there has to be more to the gameplay than just steamrolling towards quest completion. Handlock in standard is a good example of a powerful quest deck that at very least relies on the quest as a final last resort, and presents an infinitely better game to go against than pre-nerfed d6 warlock.
Just tweak the quest conditions in stormwind as a whole. Games are over the turn after these things come on board, usually around turn 6-8. If they're this powerful it should be coming out past turn 10 at least, and if the deck does nothing else other than finishing the quest, they should at very least be vulnerable while doing it; warlock in wild clearly isn't, shaman in standard will never lose to aggro, while mage can and will destroy you consistently the following turn after the quest is completed.
Hearthstone is Looking at Possible Nerfs and Buffs in the September Balance Patch, Wild Balance May be Coming
Look, I work in a Automotive OEM much much much bigger than Blizzard, I understand what you are saying in my company all the departments are “silos” every department is only responsible for their own thing. Now, if anyone identify any issue, concern, malfunction… can raise your findings to the executives, after that 2 things can happen, the executives just ignore you they are more concerned about schedules and objectives rather than product quality or they call you to explain what’s your findings and what is your proposal, all public companies works similar, if your department is not responsible for something doesn’t mean that you just have to ignore the problem. So if nothing is happening is because the executives doesn’t want or because the teams doesn’t give a fuck or because that questline situation is exactly what they want for the game at least for now.
by the way the dev is 100% responsible, they designed they questlines at the beginning, can’t they test it before before releasing? No they can’t because there is no PTR in the game, you know why there is no PTR before expansion release? Just imagine what will happen with the bundle pre-order if the people know the bullshit is about to come to hearthstone.
But don’t worry guys, in one month we are going to receive the mini set and in December the new expansion, that means in order to sell more pre-orders they need to nerf the whole quest package, or introduce something even more broken that outdates questlines o
Rant: Why Devs Making New Content Aren't Ruining the Game, Players Are
I completely forgot that packs were originally listed as a launch celebration, damn, why time gotta full Sonic and go so fast?
Thanks for sharing the story about Greenskin, I can only imagine how awesome it must feel to complete the original classic set since I sure haven't been able to yet =D. Its always great to hear when people have good experiences!
Hearthstone is Looking at Possible Nerfs and Buffs in the September Balance Patch, Wild Balance May be Coming
The amount of nerfing the questline would need in Wild to be balanced would likely make the card unplayable in Standard; I doubt they want to do that.
The easiest way to fix the problem is to ban The Demon Seed in Wild, like they did for Stealer of Souls. If they don't want to go that far, I think Crystallizer is the card to nerf instead.
Rant: Why Devs Making New Content Aren't Ruining the Game, Players Are
Preach!
Yeah its insane to me that people will complain about absolutely everything. Don't get me wrong, I've done my fair share of complaining in gaming over the years, and still do grumble about World of Warcraft at times, but it is so important that people realize you aren't the target audience for everything that goes into a game.
I think the most laughable is thinking that every player would enjoy every class. If you don't like the way Druid plays, don't play it, there are NINE other options out there with different playstyles. Like look at Duels, that was not meant to be a mode for every single player, yet, complaint city! We know there are still a ton of Duels players out there though with how much traffic some of our articles get for the mode so its great that Blizzard provided some players an avenue to continue to enjoy Hearthstone.
Mercenaries, and even Battlegrounds, is exactly that. A way to keep enjoying our favourite characters in a card game format.
Rant: Why Devs Making New Content Aren't Ruining the Game, Players Are
that is true, i remember the first wave of dh nerfs was like that, anthean and skull had its mana increased ingame while the patch was being prepared
Rant: Why Devs Making New Content Aren't Ruining the Game, Players Are
Props for speaking up about this. I feel like it can be hard for people to get the courage to speak against haters, because haters bring energy and more haters with them. Maybe a challenge we need is for more of the unspoken gratitude to be spoken so the devs and community team can get some rest from the unrelenting torrent of aggressive criticism
Hearthstone is Looking at Possible Nerfs and Buffs in the September Balance Patch, Wild Balance May be Coming
I'm not sure we're going to see games past turn 10 any time soon: I think the only thing keeping the Priest questline in check is the other questlines finishing sooner.
That said, even making it to turn 10 would be an improvement; I'd like to be able to play Sheldras Moontree.
Rant: Why Devs Making New Content Aren't Ruining the Game, Players Are
Flux I get the impression that you've "had it up to here" with the negativity. Just an inference. I may be reading between the lines here. :D
Rant: Why Devs Making New Content Aren't Ruining the Game, Players Are
Agree wholeheartedly with this - loads of love is put into the game and sometimes it’s a little off-balance but that just makes it interesting for a while as they are now quick at addressing balance. The new mode looks really cool, and if you don’t like it then you don’t HAVE to play it, and the old adage of ‘if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything’ rings true. It seems like it’ll be pretty easy to progress in mercenaries without spending any money, based on info about the packs and the current level of free packs given out for standard, as well as heroes progressing based on exp. I dislike all the negativity too. TLDR; don’t buy the new bundles if you don’t want them, but give it a go when it’s out and you might just enjoy it
Rant: Why Devs Making New Content Aren't Ruining the Game, Players Are
Yeah I'm always a huge fan of the constructed brawls, though that definitely doesn't mean random can be fun, I'd just love to not see it back-to-back-to-back lol. It would be cool to do a set of balance changes inside of brawl. I bet they'd have enough people messing around in it to get some really good data. I also know that they can buff or nerf cards server-side (the numbers show up green on the cards) so if they can also push out tech to only due that in Tavern Brawl, they wouldn't even need to patch the client to do a test like that.
Rant: Why Devs Making New Content Aren't Ruining the Game, Players Are
One of my favorite things to remind people of when there are complaints about Tavern Brawls is this quote from the original announcement (emphasis mine):
"Tavern Brawls will have free admission when the new mode becomes available. As part of the launch celebration, you'll earn a free card pack when you win your first game of the week in the first several brawls!"
And here we are, 324 Tavern Brawls later, still earning a free pack (almost) every week. Until Classic packs stopped being a thing, I never needed to buy one due to the free pack I got every week. When I opened the last card I needed from Classic (golden Captain Greenskin), I was ecstatic. Plenty of people who haven't been playing as long don't realize that originally we were expecting 4-5 free packs, not the 300+ per player they've made available. Of course, I'd love to see more variations on Tavern Brawls, but I appreciate all the work the content team does, especially with Duels.
Hearthstone is Looking at Possible Nerfs and Buffs in the September Balance Patch, Wild Balance May be Coming
I agree that's the best way to deal with Crystallizer: it doesn't destroy the card (in fact it becomes better in most other decks) but it does limit its usefulness in questline Warlock to a point where it probably won't be included anymore.
What makes Crystallizer very powerful at the moment is not only how much it helps quest completion, but also that the damage + armor after completion makes it very hard for the opponent to win a damage race after quest completion.
Rant: Why Devs Making New Content Aren't Ruining the Game, Players Are
Haha, oops. After proofreading 5 times you would think a huge mistake like that would have been caught - fixing it, thank you.
Rant: Why Devs Making New Content Aren't Ruining the Game, Players Are
i dont mind random, in tavern brawls from time to time, in fact i migth be only one that enjoys the chaos of the "servants of yogg saron" one ans similars xD , but gotta say, if ill have constructed tavern brawl, i would love to see more testing for posible new features, i had a lot of fun playing cthun decks again weeks ago, but the one i enjoyed the most was the chance to play my jade n'zoth shaman again, the one was one is one of my old favorite ones ever :D
Rant: Why Devs Making New Content Aren't Ruining the Game, Players Are
Oops! It's the other way around. Just… wanted to say that. Not that I'm using it to derail your entire argument, I just though I should point that out.
Rant: Why Devs Making New Content Aren't Ruining the Game, Players Are
I really liked the AMA where Dean talked about class bans on ladder. It would be really neat to see a Hearthstone-wide systems change for a couple of weeks just to see what improvements could potentially come to the game.
Really though, I think Hearthstone needs to get a Public Test Realm going. There are certainly potential issues with a PTR, depending on how they would handle it, but it would be a less disruptive way of testing stuff out. I too felt like Tavern Brawl was a great testing bed for stuff, its a shame they stopped using it that way and resorting more to just RANDOM ALL THE THINGS. Like we needed more random in Hearthstone, right?
Rant: Why Devs Making New Content Aren't Ruining the Game, Players Are
I cant wait for the new gacha mod :D /s
Rant: Why Devs Making New Content Aren't Ruining the Game, Players Are
Most importantly though, the developers deserve absolutely zero harassment.
Totally agree. And I'm saying that as a wild player who, well, isn't really playing as the game isn't fun for me and many others right now.
Mercenaries isn't a resource draining treadmill I'm going to get on, and I'd rather there was a option button to just disable everything related to it in the client. But if it is (or turns out to be) for you- enjoy! People like different things and there's nothing wrong about that.
I'm not going to say I'm thinking about quitting because it could sound like I think anyone else should care and cause Team 5 to have sleepless nights :P Hopefully the Hearthstone part of Hearthstone get's addressed better than it has soon.
Hearthstone is Looking at Possible Nerfs and Buffs in the September Balance Patch, Wild Balance May be Coming
Any kind of persistent reward is going to be good versus control. I think that similar to when Death Knights were in Standard, almost every control deck will have to run the questline itself.
Questline Shaman and Mage are indeed very powerful and may continue to be a problem for control decks.
Hunters can run out of resources, so if you can heal enough or put down minions they can't ignore, I think a control deck should be able to outlast them.
The Paladin questline currently seems the strongest when you play as many 1-drops as possible, but against control that's unlikely to be favored. If that deck is retooled to have more staying power, its quest completion will come later, which weakens it considerably against non-control decks. The more expensive cards are included, the more likely you'd be better off playing Handbuff instead.
Rant: Why Devs Making New Content Aren't Ruining the Game, Players Are
the past constructed taver brawl felt like a test for a posible new costructed format, with specific sets viable, that would be cool, but the idea of balancing wild is more apealing for me at least, that way people could try its wacky or homebrew decks without dying that fast and those who love the degenerate broken/fast/apm stuff would still have its place to have fun in the eternal mode
Rant: Why Devs Making New Content Aren't Ruining the Game, Players Are
Did you miss the part about the different teams thing?
Wow.
Most of the folks creating Art for Hearthstone are contracted to do so, they aren't even a part of the development team. There's a lead Artist type person that deals with all of them and makes sure stuff has that "Hearthstone" look and what they overall expected out of some art.
Yeah, a company is going to make money. Its actually embarrassing at how long it took Blizzard to step up the hero skin game when you look at how players for all those years were literally asking them to make more skins so they could buy them.
Rant: Why Devs Making New Content Aren't Ruining the Game, Players Are
Making hero portraits and other visuals brings money fast. Making game stable doesn't.
Rant: Why Devs Making New Content Aren't Ruining the Game, Players Are
Louder for the people in the back!
Rant: Why Devs Making New Content Aren't Ruining the Game, Players Are
Now, I'm hungry and I've got finishing touches to put on everything I've been working on after Tuesday's huge patch and information drop. Can people behave like 30 minutes?
Also, generally speaking, Out of Cards is a much more positive place than other spots that Hearthstone gets discussed, though if you follow the right folks on Twitter and never look at mentions, there's much positivity to see there too. I'm damn serious about kicking people off our site if the only thing they want to do is be negative about the game. If you just want to spew non-constructive bullshit, reddit has a new discussion button that largely goes unmoderated.
Hearthstone is Looking at Possible Nerfs and Buffs in the September Balance Patch, Wild Balance May be Coming
It might be time for team5 to bite the bullet and simply admit that the stormwind quests as a whole are too powerful and too easily completed. I don't mind if the rewards are powerful, but it should at least be hard to complete, or there has to be more to the gameplay than just steamrolling towards quest completion. Handlock in standard is a good example of a powerful quest deck that at very least relies on the quest as a final last resort, and presents an infinitely better game to go against than pre-nerfed d6 warlock.
Just tweak the quest conditions in stormwind as a whole. Games are over the turn after these things come on board, usually around turn 6-8. If they're this powerful it should be coming out past turn 10 at least, and if the deck does nothing else other than finishing the quest, they should at very least be vulnerable while doing it; warlock in wild clearly isn't, shaman in standard will never lose to aggro, while mage can and will destroy you consistently the following turn after the quest is completed.