Otherwise, with so many other cards to compete against, the only other option is to essentially make new cards so good that the game becomes all about the new cards.
Really? You wanted to avoid this with standard. This is exactly, precisely, completely what you did with MSoG.
If by 'this', you mean 'make new cards good so the game becomes all about the new cards' - Many decks in the post MSG era are still running very high percentages of classic and basic cards. Pirate Warrior runs 22, Miracle runs 22. There may be a couple cards that are iconic in those decks from the new set, but overall, Classic and Basic make up the smaller percentage of total cards, and a higher percentage of the cards that people are playing. Ideally, people are playing more of the rotating cards, because then we see the meta change when new cards are released. The only options to achieve that are to reduce the power level of basic and classic, or to increase the power level of the rotating sets.
There is tons of design space in our tier one-complexity level design
I don't really understand this. ELI5 please because my assumption right now is that this means the top tier of stuff is deliberately designed to be autoplaying.
Complexity is different than strategic depth. For example, 'Whirlwind' is very simple. So is 'Acolyte of Pain'. So is 'Frothing Berserker'. Together, these cards were part of one of the most strategically difficult decks to play in our history. Hearthstone cards are at their best when we have plenty of strategic depth, but low complexity.
You can get more depth by adding more complexity, but I actually think that cards with the highest ratio of depth to complexity are the best designs.
Sometimes we talk about 'design space'. Here's a good way to think of it: Imagine all vanilla (no-text) minions. Like literally, every possible one we could make. Everything from Wisp to Faceless Behemoth. Even accounting for balance variation (i.e. 5-mana 6/6 (good) and 5-mana 4/4 (bad)), there are a limited number of minions in that list. Once we've made every combination of them - if we still wanted to make future ones, we'd just have to start reprinting old ones. At some point, they will all have been done. That list is the complete list of 'design space' for vanilla minions.
The next level of design space would be minions with just keywords on them (Windfury, Stealth, Divine Shield, etc). There are many cards to be made with just keywords, and some are quite interesting. Wickerflame Burnbristle is fascinating, especially because of how he interacts with the Goons mechanic. But eventually (without adding more keywords), this space will be fully explored as well.
When you plan for a game to exist forever, or even just when it's time to invent new cards, thinking about what 'design space' you have remaining to explore is important.
Some day (far in the future), it's conceivable that all the 'simple, but strategically deep' designs have been fully explored, and new Hearthstone cards will need to have 6-10 lines of text to begin exploring new space. The point of my line was that I believe that day is very, very far off. I believe we can make very interesting cards and still make them simple enough to grasp without consulting a lawyer.
Ben Brode
Thanks, I fixed it :)
Ben Brode
If by 'this', you mean 'make new cards good so the game becomes all about the new cards' - Many decks in the post MSG era are still running very high percentages of classic and basic cards. Pirate Warrior runs 22, Miracle runs 22. There may be a couple cards that are iconic in those decks from the new set, but overall, Classic and Basic make up the smaller percentage of total cards, and a higher percentage of the cards that people are playing. Ideally, people are playing more of the rotating cards, because then we see the meta change when new cards are released. The only options to achieve that are to reduce the power level of basic and classic, or to increase the power level of the rotating sets.
Complexity is different than strategic depth. For example, 'Whirlwind' is very simple. So is 'Acolyte of Pain'. So is 'Frothing Berserker'. Together, these cards were part of one of the most strategically difficult decks to play in our history. Hearthstone cards are at their best when we have plenty of strategic depth, but low complexity.
You can get more depth by adding more complexity, but I actually think that cards with the highest ratio of depth to complexity are the best designs.
Sometimes we talk about 'design space'. Here's a good way to think of it: Imagine all vanilla (no-text) minions. Like literally, every possible one we could make. Everything from Wisp to Faceless Behemoth. Even accounting for balance variation (i.e. 5-mana 6/6 (good) and 5-mana 4/4 (bad)), there are a limited number of minions in that list. Once we've made every combination of them - if we still wanted to make future ones, we'd just have to start reprinting old ones. At some point, they will all have been done. That list is the complete list of 'design space' for vanilla minions.
The next level of design space would be minions with just keywords on them (Windfury, Stealth, Divine Shield, etc). There are many cards to be made with just keywords, and some are quite interesting. Wickerflame Burnbristle is fascinating, especially because of how he interacts with the Goons mechanic. But eventually (without adding more keywords), this space will be fully explored as well.
When you plan for a game to exist forever, or even just when it's time to invent new cards, thinking about what 'design space' you have remaining to explore is important.
Some day (far in the future), it's conceivable that all the 'simple, but strategically deep' designs have been fully explored, and new Hearthstone cards will need to have 6-10 lines of text to begin exploring new space. The point of my line was that I believe that day is very, very far off. I believe we can make very interesting cards and still make them simple enough to grasp without consulting a lawyer.