The reason why nobody bothers playing that card is simple: NOBODY plays a 2 mana slow speed stun that asks you to have Darius and to keep Darius until it resolves to do sth good but not game winning. WHY would anyone play a 2 mana spell which is in 1 out of 20 cases useful?
How do you even want to win with units in a meta with ugin... i mean aurelion ramp and lulu challengers in it?
I am (almost) sorry to call this card straight junk and you have to admit that it doesn't even make sense in darrowing lists since having a second attack phase is quite a meme for ephemeral units isn't it?
Feel free to play it but don't be disappointed if it sucks.
This meta is way more conducive to Specialists format. It may be something that evolves into what last attempt was where everyone brought the same decks every week, but this was way more entertaining to watch imo than the first time around.
One thing I always try and check is the presentation of the text box. I try and avoid having orphans (a single number or word on a line). It sounds pointless but honestly there are some cards that have really damn cool effects and art, but the text box is just so off-putting to look at. I'm gonna take heed on these lessons though, try and become a better card designer.
Also, though I cannot confirm this, it seemed like Omen Hawk did not work with Stalking Shadows. I played a Stalking Shadows expecting to see a buffed option, but the cards offered did not show the buffs. I don't know if this is a bug or intended, but it seemed like you're guessing which cards were buffed and which weren't. And if you don't pick a buffed one, you just wasted both buffs.
This sounds like an unintended side effect of the way it's coded. I say this because of the animation when you play Stalking Shadows: It seems to obliterate the card you choose, then puts two copies (one with Ephemeral) into your hand. This would be fine if they were exact copies, but I guess they are not.
This is, of course inconsistent with the card's text, which clearly says you draw the card, then make a copy. Drawing the card should never erase buffs. And even if you're just guessing wrong, the cards presented should show any buffs at the very least.
I hope they push a bug-fix patch before the three-week update. Between stuff like this and the invisible unit bug, there's a lot of inconvenience to deal with.
Responding briefly to the original post - it's actually fine for a small number of regions to be uniquely effective at card advantage. Taking MTG as an example, Blue is unique in its capacity to generate card advantage, but that doesn't break the game because it has weaknesses too. This kind of gets at what Hellcopter is saying - there's a broader context in which card advantage exists, and that context is important. No region should be great at everything, and maybe there's a case to be made that certain mechanics (Daybreak and Celestials being the most likely in my mind) push Targon to be too good at too much, but having one region be the best at card advantage is not inherently bad.
I've been playing Swim's Mistwraiths list, and it's definitely good. However, I'm super not-sold on the Omen Hawk. Yes, sometimes it buffs Kalisa or Elise, but sometimes it buffs Cursed Keeper. And man is it a feel-bad moment when Cursed Keeper gets the buff.
Also, though I cannot confirm this, it seemed like Omen Hawk did not work with Stalking Shadows. I played a Stalking Shadows expecting to see a buffed option, but the cards offered did not show the buffs. I don't know if this is a bug or intended, but it seemed like you're guessing which cards were buffed and which weren't. And if you don't pick a buffed one, you just wasted both buffs.
These are some awesome points, thanks for that KANSAS!
In terms of the description box, I used it to post flavour text, followed by a brief-to-mid-length description of my thought process behind the card. In particular, I would use it to stress flavour. Oftentimes, I see a card and its effect and sort of get where the creator was coming from, but not really. This is especially true for cards that use existing WoW characters or creatures. I don't play WoW, and I know if I would choose to use a character from the lore, I would research it first and mention its connection to the card in HS.
If I may add a little to your point about Presentation....
Hearthstone exists within a particular universe. Although it has diverged from Warcraft significantly, Hearthstone is still rooted within its universe. The characters and critters that appear could feasibly appear in WoW or its lore in some form. One might be tempted to simply 'create a card' that would be cool in a card game, but remember that you're creating a Hearthstone (Heroes of Warcraft) card. You don't need to be an expert on it by any means, but having even a cursory understanding can help make your card seem extra realistic, especially when designing Legendaries.
I personally met this deck only once while playing Razakus Priest - I Dirty Rated Maexxna, stabilized with Wave of Apathy and proceeded to win with a Kazakus 10 mana Polymorph pot.
Not gonna lie, my opponent didn't enjoy it as much as I did lol
Today we are going to start the second season of the WCDC (weekly card design competition), and I wanted to share some of the lessons I learned about designing cards from the first season. Hopefully this list is useful to you, and I don't end up wasting my time writing this.
Keep it Simple, Stupid! K.I.S.S. or M.A.Y.A. (Most advanced, yet acceptable) are good acronyms to keep in mind when designing cards. You don't want your card to be super bland and boring, but if it is too different and unique then people won't be able to connect with it. You want your card to be as interesting and different as possible while still being within the realm of possibility. Don't try to think of something brand new, try to think of a new spin you can put on an existing thing.
Don't make too many cards. Sometimes people in the discussion thread create multiple cards and ask which one is best, and while this may seem like a good idea it usually isn't. All of your feedback will be split up and it will be hard to decide on which card is better. Just submit one card and if people don't like it then you whip out your second card. Don't bring out both cards at the same time and ask people to choose.
Presentation matters. This is both concerning art, and the text on your card. Make sure the art fits Hearthstone's theme and flavor. I know finding art sucks, but it is worth the trouble. Also make sure you have proper punctuation, capitalization, and wording on your card. You could come up with the most creative and innovative card in the world, but if you don't present it in a proper way then it won't get very many stars.
The Customer is always right. If you want your card to do well, you should cater it to your audience. You may think your card is super cool and creative, but if nobody else agrees then your card will do poorly. You shouldn't make every change that people suggest, but you also shouldn't try too hard to defend your card when nobody agrees with you.
Check the submissions before submitting. I can recall a handful of times when multiple people made cards with the same art/ability/concept/or whatever, and they never did very well. Your idea has to be unique if you want people to vote high, so check to make sure nobody else has made the same card as you before you submit.
PUT YOUR CARD IN THE DISCUSSION THREAD BEFORE SUBMITTING! This is the most important thing you could do. Other people are smarter than you and might catch mistakes in your card that you didn't notice. I don't think a card submitted within the first 24 hours has ever made it to the finalists, let alone won. You have roughly 4 days to get feedback and make adjustments, use that time well. You don't get anything for being the first person to submit your card.
That is my list of lessons I learned from season 1, hopefully this stuff wasn't too obvious. If you have any advice you would like to share I would love to hear it. One thing in particular that I am interested in knowing is your opinion on the description box, and what kind of thing you write in it. Sometimes I would write about the practical uses of my card and how it might be played. Other times I would talk about the design process of my card and how it got to where it is. And sometimes I would just write flavor text. What do you think the best thing to put in the description box is? And does it even matter, or am I over-thinking it?
I don't really disagree with the idea that the design of Call of the Mountain is amateurish (which, as it happens, means exactly the same thing as the adjective form of "dilettante"), but I do take issue with your characterizing it as "for clueless casual mobile players." Nothing about truly bad design supports any group of players - mobile, casual, or pro - and hating on casual players doesn't really help anyone. If you have one or more critiques of the design, please share them. But hating on a player group and calling the expansion "stupid" isn't a very productive way to engage in a discussion.
Do we really think we are in a position to decide in less than a week whether the design of Call of the Mountain was amateurish? Sure, the first 2-3 days were basically a blitz of almost all the same couple of decks. But now (like most other times in the game's history) I'm seeing a remarkable array of different viable decks and strategies. Cards that were laughed off as being unplayable are being played with brutal efficiency (Nocture and Diana, to name two).
I think the set is shaping up to be quite fun, diverse, and well-designed.
I think perhaps you're inflating the extent to which people were laughing off particular cards. Diana, for instance, is featured in at least one deck on the "meta list" on Mobalytics, and while I certainly have my criticisms of that list, her being there means at least some pro players think she's a good champion, and that list does impact the metagame.
But to your main question, I think the answer is still yes, we can determine that this game is being designed in an amateurish way. And I think that claim is reasonable because the core design flaws of the game have been on display for a while, and this expansion only continues that trend. In particular, I'm talking about a few different design goals in the context of what seems like Riot ignoring Goodhart's Law. (Goodhart's law states that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.) The design goals I'm thinking about are:
Every champion should have enough support to have a deck they fit best in (i.e. to play out the "fantasy" of that Champion)
Champions should reflect their League characters as authentically as possible
No card should be filler - every card should have a chance to be useful in the meta
The first creates a muddled region identity, where very few cards exist to establish what the region is good at because almost all cards exist to be in service of some champion's archetype. Take Noxus for example. In the launch set, they were mostly focused on combat with big, overwhelming units - they had cards that buffed attack, cards with quick attack and overwhelm, cards that benefit from surviving damage, and finally an array of cards that benefited from having high power stuff (5+ power). Even some of the cards that produced non-combat damage (e.g. Legion Saboteur and Legion Grenadier) still emphasize entering combat. In Rising Tides, all of the sudden there's tons of non-combat damage tools in service of leveling up Swain, and the card most in line with the original themes of the region (Armored Tuskrider) never sees any play. Without clear region identities, the reason to pair regions ends up being "because the synergy is baked in." Want to run Self Harm? Better run Noxus/Freljord. Want to run Deep? Better run Bilgewater/Shadow Isles. Etc., etc., etc.
The second creates an over-emphasis on adding new mechanics rather than exploring and mastering the design of existing mechanics. This expansion features six new mechanics, and when the set is done it may feature many more. These mechanics are clearly added in service of a champion rather than good game design. Take Daybreak, for example. It exists to support the fantasy of Leona, but it plays out very strangely: Turn 1 Solari Soldier, turn 2 Solari Shieldbearer, turn 3 Solari Priestess, turn 4 leveled up Leona, turn 5 Rahvun, Daylight's Spear. The package is strange because Leona is clearly a midrange style champion, and the mechanic they added to support her (i.e. play this card as your first card) just rewards the player for playing exactly as they would in any midrange style deck - curve out with units. The result is a mechanic which does two things: makes deck-building a boring exercise (because if I'm playing Leona, I obviously want to include a bunch of Daybreak stuff), and makes playing the deck one-note (because the mechanic doesn't get you to ever push against the linear gameplay pattern the archetype already naturally has). Ultimately, if their patches result in a good opportunity for midrange again (as it did with Sej/Ashe recently), I fully expect Daybreak to become a problem that needs some kind of change because of how it was designed to overemphasize linear midrange play rather than challenge the player to think.
The previous two goals contribute to an environment where balance is very hard to produce, directly impacting that final design goal. And it's the final design goal where we really get into Goodhart's law, because it emphasizes constant tinkering with the metagame in pursuit of "balance metrics" that the overall design approach has made incredibly difficult. This approach has been stated plainly by designer Andrew Yip in a Q&A session: "we’ll lean on more common tools like balance updates and different formats for cards to have a chance to shine." They have a goal of seeing all cards be good at some point, and they plan to achieve that by constantly tweaking cards so that some become relevant and some become irrelevant over time. And I'm sure when they look to see which champions have been good or bad and which cards have been good or bad, their data will tell them they've achieved their goal, because they've got their thumb on the scale. Some might look at this as a good thing, but I think it deeply hampers the fun of strategic deck-building in service of the fun of active decision-making during play. Both are important parts of a CCG, but Riot seems to care a lot less about the former. Again, in that interview, Yip says "my goals are to make sure players feel their skill matters but also that players have a hugely varied experience with lots of novel situations and memorable moments." They approach skill in a CCG as being able to pilot a deck against a wide array of scenarios, but that's not the whole picture.
It's crazy to see how far Eddie was carried by deck selection this season. While Turtle Mage isn't a deck you particularly want to take to ladder, it is so strong in more limited tournament settings.
I'm not sure why other GMs didn't follow his lead.
Well it's like old hs rank 20, it's the beggining of the ladder many gold players can find themselves in iron if they didn't play..
I am also in iron cause I never put enough time to go higher than silver.. just didn't feel like it.. so basically I am iron 4 with an almost full collection.
With season 2 of the weekly card design competitions right around the corner, I'm bound to search the hell out of the card database again. Comparing costs, stats, effects and so on often requires to use several filters. I really appreciate all the work you've put in there, cleaning up the menu and staying up to date with all the weird new stuff (new class, dual class cards, new keywords, ...).
One thing I've been missing on several occasions is a button that deletes all applied filters. It's an easy workaround to reload the collectible cards page from the menu, but such a button would be a nice quality of life feature neverthless. It could also be applied to other sites that use filters, like Decks.
Fixing Darrowing - New Set
The reason why nobody bothers playing that card is simple: NOBODY plays a 2 mana slow speed stun that asks you to have Darius and to keep Darius until it resolves to do sth good but not game winning. WHY would anyone play a 2 mana spell which is in 1 out of 20 cases useful?
How do you even want to win with units in a meta with ugin... i mean aurelion ramp and lulu challengers in it?
I am (almost) sorry to call this card straight junk and you have to admit that it doesn't even make sense in darrowing lists since having a second attack phase is quite a meme for ephemeral units isn't it?
Feel free to play it but don't be disappointed if it sucks.
Fixing Darrowing - New Set
There was a ton of hype around this little card around expansion launch and I haven't seen a single player experiment with it.
I think this a result of nerf mentality that Noxious allegiance lists got hit and it was just baby out with the bath water.
Well I'm here to tell you that Darius is good, and that there is a deck out there for this great card.
Give it a shot and let me know what you guys think.
Turns out getting a golden Kalecgos on Turn 7 as Reno Jackson is pretttttty good!
https://youtu.be/yDbO14P0-b0
Top 200 Battlegrounds YouTuber - HOW TO BUILD EXODIA PIRATES!
https://youtu.be/yDbO14P0-b0
Hearthstone Grandmasters 2020 Season 2 - Week 3 Results, Decklists, and More!
This meta is way more conducive to Specialists format. It may be something that evolves into what last attempt was where everyone brought the same decks every week, but this was way more entertaining to watch imo than the first time around.
Braum Anivia
Braum is just a way to delay the game in a list like this, it's not like you're running Vlad and take heart where Braum is a win con.
The Future of the Runeterra Meta - Clues From Friday's Reckoning Tournament
Very good article.
WCDC Season 2, Lessons from Season 1
One thing I always try and check is the presentation of the text box. I try and avoid having orphans (a single number or word on a line). It sounds pointless but honestly there are some cards that have really damn cool effects and art, but the text box is just so off-putting to look at. I'm gonna take heed on these lessons though, try and become a better card designer.
The Future of the Runeterra Meta - Clues From Friday's Reckoning Tournament
Thanks for the report! There's a lot of food for thought, and several interesting new decks that had not yet come across my radar.
The Future of the Runeterra Meta - Clues From Friday's Reckoning Tournament
This sounds like an unintended side effect of the way it's coded. I say this because of the animation when you play Stalking Shadows: It seems to obliterate the card you choose, then puts two copies (one with Ephemeral) into your hand. This would be fine if they were exact copies, but I guess they are not.
This is, of course inconsistent with the card's text, which clearly says you draw the card, then make a copy. Drawing the card should never erase buffs. And even if you're just guessing wrong, the cards presented should show any buffs at the very least.
I hope they push a bug-fix patch before the three-week update. Between stuff like this and the invisible unit bug, there's a lot of inconvenience to deal with.
So who thought that a region being generally good at card advantage was a good idea?
Responding briefly to the original post - it's actually fine for a small number of regions to be uniquely effective at card advantage. Taking MTG as an example, Blue is unique in its capacity to generate card advantage, but that doesn't break the game because it has weaknesses too. This kind of gets at what Hellcopter is saying - there's a broader context in which card advantage exists, and that context is important. No region should be great at everything, and maybe there's a case to be made that certain mechanics (Daybreak and Celestials being the most likely in my mind) push Targon to be too good at too much, but having one region be the best at card advantage is not inherently bad.
The Future of the Runeterra Meta - Clues From Friday's Reckoning Tournament
I've been playing Swim's Mistwraiths list, and it's definitely good. However, I'm super not-sold on the Omen Hawk. Yes, sometimes it buffs Kalisa or Elise, but sometimes it buffs Cursed Keeper. And man is it a feel-bad moment when Cursed Keeper gets the buff.
Also, though I cannot confirm this, it seemed like Omen Hawk did not work with Stalking Shadows. I played a Stalking Shadows expecting to see a buffed option, but the cards offered did not show the buffs. I don't know if this is a bug or intended, but it seemed like you're guessing which cards were buffed and which weren't. And if you don't pick a buffed one, you just wasted both buffs.
WCDC Season 2, Lessons from Season 1
These are some awesome points, thanks for that KANSAS!
In terms of the description box, I used it to post flavour text, followed by a brief-to-mid-length description of my thought process behind the card. In particular, I would use it to stress flavour. Oftentimes, I see a card and its effect and sort of get where the creator was coming from, but not really. This is especially true for cards that use existing WoW characters or creatures. I don't play WoW, and I know if I would choose to use a character from the lore, I would research it first and mention its connection to the card in HS.
If I may add a little to your point about Presentation....
Hearthstone exists within a particular universe. Although it has diverged from Warcraft significantly, Hearthstone is still rooted within its universe. The characters and critters that appear could feasibly appear in WoW or its lore in some form. One might be tempted to simply 'create a card' that would be cool in a card game, but remember that you're creating a Hearthstone (Heroes of Warcraft) card. You don't need to be an expert on it by any means, but having even a cursory understanding can help make your card seem extra realistic, especially when designing Legendaries.
Hearthstone Grandmasters 2020 Season 2 - Week 3 Results, Decklists, and More!
A GM can probably become experienced with it...or at least they should be able to.
JustATaco's Odd Taunt Druid
I personally met this deck only once while playing Razakus Priest - I Dirty Rated Maexxna, stabilized with Wave of Apathy and proceeded to win with a Kazakus 10 mana Polymorph pot.
Not gonna lie, my opponent didn't enjoy it as much as I did lol
Revitalizing roar
You're welcome :)
WCDC Season 2, Lessons from Season 1
Today we are going to start the second season of the WCDC (weekly card design competition), and I wanted to share some of the lessons I learned about designing cards from the first season. Hopefully this list is useful to you, and I don't end up wasting my time writing this.
That is my list of lessons I learned from season 1, hopefully this stuff wasn't too obvious. If you have any advice you would like to share I would love to hear it. One thing in particular that I am interested in knowing is your opinion on the description box, and what kind of thing you write in it. Sometimes I would write about the practical uses of my card and how it might be played. Other times I would talk about the design process of my card and how it got to where it is. And sometimes I would just write flavor text. What do you think the best thing to put in the description box is? And does it even matter, or am I over-thinking it?
List of Runeterra Daily Quests
Hearthstone Grandmasters 2020 Season 2 - Week 3 Results, Decklists, and More!
Well it has a lot to do with confidence... Unlike Eddie other GMs are not as experienced with the deck...
So who thought that a region being generally good at card advantage was a good idea?
I think perhaps you're inflating the extent to which people were laughing off particular cards. Diana, for instance, is featured in at least one deck on the "meta list" on Mobalytics, and while I certainly have my criticisms of that list, her being there means at least some pro players think she's a good champion, and that list does impact the metagame.
But to your main question, I think the answer is still yes, we can determine that this game is being designed in an amateurish way. And I think that claim is reasonable because the core design flaws of the game have been on display for a while, and this expansion only continues that trend. In particular, I'm talking about a few different design goals in the context of what seems like Riot ignoring Goodhart's Law. (Goodhart's law states that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.) The design goals I'm thinking about are:
The first creates a muddled region identity, where very few cards exist to establish what the region is good at because almost all cards exist to be in service of some champion's archetype. Take Noxus for example. In the launch set, they were mostly focused on combat with big, overwhelming units - they had cards that buffed attack, cards with quick attack and overwhelm, cards that benefit from surviving damage, and finally an array of cards that benefited from having high power stuff (5+ power). Even some of the cards that produced non-combat damage (e.g. Legion Saboteur and Legion Grenadier) still emphasize entering combat. In Rising Tides, all of the sudden there's tons of non-combat damage tools in service of leveling up Swain, and the card most in line with the original themes of the region (Armored Tuskrider) never sees any play. Without clear region identities, the reason to pair regions ends up being "because the synergy is baked in." Want to run Self Harm? Better run Noxus/Freljord. Want to run Deep? Better run Bilgewater/Shadow Isles. Etc., etc., etc.
The second creates an over-emphasis on adding new mechanics rather than exploring and mastering the design of existing mechanics. This expansion features six new mechanics, and when the set is done it may feature many more. These mechanics are clearly added in service of a champion rather than good game design. Take Daybreak, for example. It exists to support the fantasy of Leona, but it plays out very strangely: Turn 1 Solari Soldier, turn 2 Solari Shieldbearer, turn 3 Solari Priestess, turn 4 leveled up Leona, turn 5 Rahvun, Daylight's Spear. The package is strange because Leona is clearly a midrange style champion, and the mechanic they added to support her (i.e. play this card as your first card) just rewards the player for playing exactly as they would in any midrange style deck - curve out with units. The result is a mechanic which does two things: makes deck-building a boring exercise (because if I'm playing Leona, I obviously want to include a bunch of Daybreak stuff), and makes playing the deck one-note (because the mechanic doesn't get you to ever push against the linear gameplay pattern the archetype already naturally has). Ultimately, if their patches result in a good opportunity for midrange again (as it did with Sej/Ashe recently), I fully expect Daybreak to become a problem that needs some kind of change because of how it was designed to overemphasize linear midrange play rather than challenge the player to think.
The previous two goals contribute to an environment where balance is very hard to produce, directly impacting that final design goal. And it's the final design goal where we really get into Goodhart's law, because it emphasizes constant tinkering with the metagame in pursuit of "balance metrics" that the overall design approach has made incredibly difficult. This approach has been stated plainly by designer Andrew Yip in a Q&A session: "we’ll lean on more common tools like balance updates and different formats for cards to have a chance to shine." They have a goal of seeing all cards be good at some point, and they plan to achieve that by constantly tweaking cards so that some become relevant and some become irrelevant over time. And I'm sure when they look to see which champions have been good or bad and which cards have been good or bad, their data will tell them they've achieved their goal, because they've got their thumb on the scale. Some might look at this as a good thing, but I think it deeply hampers the fun of strategic deck-building in service of the fun of active decision-making during play. Both are important parts of a CCG, but Riot seems to care a lot less about the former. Again, in that interview, Yip says "my goals are to make sure players feel their skill matters but also that players have a hugely varied experience with lots of novel situations and memorable moments." They approach skill in a CCG as being able to pilot a deck against a wide array of scenarios, but that's not the whole picture.
Revitalizing roar
clear - tks
[Game] Card Treasure Hunt (The Resurrection Attempt)
Just bumping the thread in case @torto123 hasn't seen it :)
Hearthstone Grandmasters 2020 Season 2 - Week 3 Results, Decklists, and More!
It's crazy to see how far Eddie was carried by deck selection this season. While Turtle Mage isn't a deck you particularly want to take to ladder, it is so strong in more limited tournament settings.
I'm not sure why other GMs didn't follow his lead.
The quite shocking "new player experience"
Well it's like old hs rank 20, it's the beggining of the ladder many gold players can find themselves in iron if they didn't play..
I am also in iron cause I never put enough time to go higher than silver.. just didn't feel like it.. so basically I am iron 4 with an almost full collection.
Delete all Filters
With season 2 of the weekly card design competitions right around the corner, I'm bound to search the hell out of the card database again. Comparing costs, stats, effects and so on often requires to use several filters. I really appreciate all the work you've put in there, cleaning up the menu and staying up to date with all the weird new stuff (new class, dual class cards, new keywords, ...).
One thing I've been missing on several occasions is a button that deletes all applied filters. It's an easy workaround to reload the collectible cards page from the menu, but such a button would be a nice quality of life feature neverthless. It could also be applied to other sites that use filters, like Decks.