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Bluetracker

Tracks Blizzard employees across various accounts.

Blizzard's design priority being on players that won't even read the bottom half of a card feels like an insult to a community that is well in tune with the state of the meta game.

I'm sure I'm not the only one that felt a bit sick when reading the justification for the change to Fiery War Axe (and, by extension, the Murloc Warleader change).

It's even clearer now that Blizzard's priority is squarely on the portion of the players that won't even bother to read or understand recent changelogs, so much so that updates will stay away from changing elements of cards that appear on the bottom portion of cards (less visible in the hand).

Many of the game's more subtle power problems are not just in regards to "the mana cost of a card", and more creative changes could be made more frequently to make shake-ups to what are obviously unhealthy meta-game-states.

How do we feel about this priority being on "new" or "infrequent" players when it comes to making class-shifting design balances such as the War Axe nerf?

  • Ben Brode
    Posted 8 years, 4 months ago (Source)

    when reading the justification for the change to Fiery War Axe (and, by extension, the Murloc Warleader change).

    I just want to make it clear that those are meant to cover some of the thinking behind why we went with option A over option B - not why we decided to make a change to begin with.

    In a world where we are looking at making a change, we felt like these changes are slightly less disruptive and that is upside, in a vacuum.

    It's not a vacuum, obviously, but the goal here was to reduce power level because the ratio of basic/classic cards in Standard decks is still too high (they represent the biggest percentage of played cards, still).

    Commonly, when we mention that we think about a wide variety of players, it can come off like we are focusing on new players at the expense of currently engaged players. That isn't the way we think about it. Usually we look for win-win solutions, where a change is good for the ongoing fun of playing Hearthstone and is also not disruptive to loosely engaged players. We've definitely made changes that are quite disruptive because it's very important to keep Hearthstone fun for engaged players. Just because we prefer non-disruptive changes doesn't mean we are trying to do that at the expense of other types of players.

    Specifically, we made these changes for engaged players who are most affected by imbalance (deck diversity goes down the higher rank you are), and who are most likely to want to see the meta change when new sets come out or during the yearly set rotation.

  • Ben Brode
    Posted 8 years, 4 months ago (Source)

    the ratio of basic/classic cards in Standard decks is still too high (they represent the biggest percentage of played cards, still).

    isn't that the whole point why classic set is evergreen? not only that, basic cards solidify class identity. not a big fan of war axe, innervate, and warleader changes mr brode.

    What do you think the right percentage of evergreen cards in decks should be?

    I tend to think 10-ish cards might be right. We're way above that right now, and I think it would be better if it were closer to 10.

  • Ben Brode
    Posted 8 years, 4 months ago (Source)

    the ratio of basic/classic cards in Standard decks is still too high (they represent the biggest percentage of played cards, still).

    I mean remember when Kibler and a lot of people said that it's gonna be a mistake that you keep Basic and Classic in Standard forever?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUupMooIJYo&feature=youtu.be&t=4m17s

    I really do want to believe that you want the best for this game yet so many times we have this "we said you so" moment. I love this game but honestly the evergreen sets policy is the biggest problem that holding back the whole design of the game. A rotating core set with reprints would make much more sense. But whatever, our opinion doesn't mean anything in the end.

    Keeping Basic and Classic around with no changes was never the plan. We launched rotation with twelve nerfs, specifically because we knew we couldn't just have evergreen sets as-is. There is value in having evergreen sets, but there is a balance to it. Our Hall of Fame system is similar in some ways to a rotating core set.

  • Ben Brode
    Posted 8 years, 4 months ago (Source)

    bbrode how will you make the game accessible for new players if they cant build matadecks for even longer than now?

    Hoping to have something to announce that will help with these problems early next year. We have a lot of work to do on the new player experience, but some of these problems can be mitigated by matchmaking, to some extent.

  • Ben Brode
    Posted 8 years, 4 months ago (Source)

    Thank you so much for the reply.

    It's always reassuring that you care so much about this community (I know you do!).

    I think clearing up the intention behind the changes and separating that from the reason you settled on a certain one over the others is important, and even if it was clear to some people it may not have been as clear to others.

    I admittedly am partially upset because I'm a murloc main. Love the game and hope that these changes make more sense in the coming months.

    I will go on knowing that design changes like the one on Fiery War Axe really are for the purpose of class balance or opening design space, rather than nerfing an abusive card in a way that is least confusing to casual players.

    Thanks again.

    Thank you very much for adding my post in your edit! /salute

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