The number of HS formats is not that confusing though. It's two primary formats. Yes, the developers want to keep things simple so that they aren't confusing, but constantly nerfing cards in counter intuitive of that goal. Take WoW for example, there were complaints from returning players who had taken a break and then found that their favorite class(es) were ability pruned or had talents/default abilities changed drastically to the point that they no longer recognized their class. Now of course an MMORPG is much different than a CCG, but the general idea still stands that if you change too much of want returning players enjoyed or were familiar with then they are more likely to be turned off. Having to have returning players return and find any one of the 18 odd/even decks working completely different than they used to before taking a break is likely to risk turning those players off. I think it is safe to say that most players like to be able to pop a game back in and not have to relearn everything again.
Wrong, wrong, WRONG. For starters, Standard is the primary HS game mode. The devs said at the outset that they consider Wild to be a fun bonus mode a la arena or tavern brawls.
"Mike Donais: There’s still a good amount of people playing Wild. The thing is, I think – like you said – Standard is super healthy and fun, and there’s good variety, and I think Wild is more there for you, like Arena or Tavern Brawl, for when you want to take a break. You’ve had enough Standard, you’re tired of losing to X super popular deck, and you need to try something out, where you won’t run into that deck as much, and Wild is perfect for that."
Any change is going to cause some amount of confusion. That doesn't mean there shouldn't be any changes, it means that the need for changes has to be weighed against potential player confusion. It means that the least confusing option is the most appealing. What's *more* confusing, occasionally nerfing problem cards in all formats or coming up with an ever-expanding list of formats with format-specific card pools and ban lists?
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Neither of us having evidence means that neither point is proven or disproven. Your stance is no more valid than mine unless concrete evidence is provided so I fail to see why you're debating this point of the topic. Genn/Baku were HoFed because they would have had to have made substantial changes to the cards to provide any form of nerf in standard. Combine that with strong tools like Defile getting rotated out that previously combated Odd Pally and to a lesser extent Even Shaman the cards were HoFed. I've seen no blue posts that have stated that they currently plan to nerf or look at the decks in wild. Suggesting that they do plan to do this with less evidence than this is no more than wishful thinking for ex-standard players wanting to mold their wild experience for everyone else.
I'm not the one who made the argument. Member this?
"Are you actually going to answer where the evidence is for T5 deciding to nerf Genn/Baku in wild or are you intentionally trying to throw the conversation in a different direction?"
If you have zero evidence one way or the other, where do you get off demanding this evidence of others and then using a lack of evidence to imply the opposite is true? When caught in a fallacious argument, why try to pretend that I'm the one making it? I'm not a goldfish, I can still vaguely recall the things you said two posts ago. If you can't argue your points honestly consider maybe conceding those points.
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Again I can point out multiple cards that make a variety of match-ups/plays predictable. Going against any form of slow control or combo warlock? Prepare to have an answer for a massive board in the late game (including saving a transform effect for Mal'Ganis as mage or shaman so that you don't instantly lose to 30+ stats on the board when Mal'Ganis is used). Going against any form of aggressive paladin list? Try to dump your hand as best as you are able from the get go so you don't give your opponent insane refill value and renewed steam to smorc your face. Going against pretty much any kind of wild mage as an OTK player? Be prepared to pop their 1+ number of Ice Blocks before using your combo or attempt to find an alternate win condition. Obviously there's plenty of more examples, but the classes are extremely scripted with how games turn out nowadays. Genn/Baku having their effects active from turn 1 doesn't really make them that much more predictable than pretty much any other deck. The reason it seems like they are more predictable is because most of the complained about decks are aggressive decks that do not end the game in the late game while the few classes I mentioned above have their predictable plays happening in the late game (which isn't seen as often as the early game due to the existence of aggro). If aggro was incredibly weak and you saw games extend late most of the time you would see how predictable the many control decks are as well).
Apples to oranges comparisons all the way down. G&B subvert the rules of HS in a significant way that doesn't apply to any of the cards or decks you listed, and you're *well aware* of the argument, so I really don't understand the compulsion to make these false equivocations. Improved hero powers being active on turn one independent of what you draw or what you choose to play on turn one is a massive, massive change to how hearthstone works fundamentally, and the fact that these decks can then lean on their hero power makes them *even less* draw dependent than any other type of deck. For any other card in the game, the fact that you have to draw and play it to get its effect is one of the primary balancing factors.
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I'm arguing that in the current moment we have no evidence that they are going to be nerfed. It's pointless to argue that any card can technically be nerfed out of the blue because a couple cards have in the past. If I cared enough I could make the argument that any card could be nerfed then and we wouldn't be able to anticipate it.
If cards can be nerfed without prior warning then your argument is the pointless one, not mine. "Are you actually going to answer where the evidence is for T5 deciding to nerf Genn/Baku in wild..."
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The following are taken from Urban Dictionary and Dictionary.com
Flaming: " To engage in an online argument usually involving unfounded personal attacks by one or more parties."
Debate: "a discussion, as of a publicquestion in an assembly,involvingopposingviewpoints"
The one thing I will concede to is that the person I quoted earlier didn't directly say that they found Genn/Baku decks irritating, but it was certainly implied. So my calling out of their wish to kill a deck that they found irritating wasn't completely unfounded. I feel you are reaching to call me a flamer however, considering that in nowise have I called any person a name of personal insult, hate, etc nor have I cast aside the viewpoints of my argument to instead deride a person on topics completely personal and unrelated to Genn & Baku nerfs.
I didn't call you a flamer. The words I used were "ridicule" and "mock", and I stand by them. And to be clear, I don't have a problem with mockery if it's deserved, I have a problem with mocking someone in lieu of an argument, and especially when you're guilty of the same thing you're mocking the other for, in this case, expressing opinions.
While I don't mind the idea, I think it goes against the primary hearthstone design philosophy principle of keeping things simple, so I don't think it very likely that something like this would be implemented.
As others have pointed out, creating essentially infinite custom game modes would reduce the number of players per game mode, resulting in increased loading times. Not only that, supposing some of these modes catch on and gain a dedicated following, there is the risk of balkanising the player base into distinct groups that only play one mode or the other and don't really interact or overlap, which would hurt the game long term by making it much harder for the devs to cater to an increasingly fractured audience.
It's funny, Titanic Lackey's effect was one of the more obvious possible lackey effects I considered but ultimately dismissed as a bit too bland and mediocre (the other really obvious one being "draw a card").
I certainly don't mind having gotten it wrong, I think Reborn would've felt very similar to witchy lackey in actual use and it'd have really busted high-roll potential with certain cards, like leeroy or swingy deathrattles. It just seemed like the most obvious prediction to make because it's the new keyword, not necessarily the best design decision.
I think Titanic Lackey's inclusion in the pool is a slight nerf to the overall power level of lackey cards, which is fine. It has it's uses and I'm sure there will be situations where getting the taunty boy is the nuts.
Most classes will prefer Vicious Scalehide, but the demon tag might have some hidden potential.
Felsoul Inquisitor is a demon with lifesteal and it never sees play. What makes Scalehide good is Rush + means to buff it/copy it (Rogue quest + bounce, Dire Frenzy + Master's Call, stitching it onto other beasts with DK Rexxar). If some sort of build-a-demon effect gets added to the game, sure, the card will become interesting in that context, but even then the lack of rush hurts bigtime. You don't want to give the opponent the option to remove the minion without healing you.
I honestly wouldn't mind this as a temporary arena or brawl format (like the dual class arena at Halloween). Sure, the treasure cards are busted, but so long as you get matched with players with an equal amount of wins the crazy should balance out, right?
I don't play Arena all that much but I'd definitely give dungeon-arena a few runs.
Wild getting new cards in no wise means it isn't fairly static. Both MtG and Yu-Gi-Oh had new cards added to their non-banned list formats as well but the developers didn't try micro managing popular decks in most cases for the sake of changing things that weren't broken in order make said involved formats a mirrored copy of the banned list formats.
You're moving the goalposts from "static" to "fairly static" and you're ignoring the substantive differences I've already pointed out between paper and digital card games: magic or Yu-gi-oh can't just nerf a card so their only options are banlists and multiple formats. Hearthstone has a different design philosophy, a key element of which is keeping things simple and fairly casual, something that pretty much excludes the possibility of 14 different formats with varying card pools and restrictions. Simply pointing out that other games do it that way is a poor argument for why it ought to be that way in HS, and I think that by and large that argument is refuted by the dev team's decisions over the years.
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I'm sorry but "a large number of players" hating something means absolutely nothing. Care to provide actual statistics or percentages to tell us what that is objectively supposed to mean? I'll wait while you pull those up. The thing is that I could just as easily do a survey of a random 1,000 HS players and find hundreds of players who hate control decks (even they're just tier 1 or 2) and say the exact same thing that you're saying (that a "large number of players" hate control decks). That doesn't mean it is anywhere near a majority of players.
Preposterous argument. I'm sorry, but do *you* have a list of names of all the players who think G&B are perfectly fine and shouldn't have been rotated out of standard early? Do you have a list of their hair colour and favourite pop songs?
Incomplete information is still information, and the G&B nerf gives us quite a bit of circumstantial evidence to work with. Just because I cannot present you with a quantity or proportion of players who hate G&B doesn't mean you can dismiss the argument. Try again. If you had a survey of 1000 random players you'd have more information and a better argument than you do now. Incomplete information is still better than no information.
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You also have to consider the actual regular wild audience more than the standard format audience. We don't go around balancing standard around the wild players, so in the end it is the wild players' feeling towards the cards in the wild format that matter much more than the standard players. Also note that the devs HoFed them because they were a problem in STANDARD, and not as big of an issue in wild. Hell, standard players b*tched and moaned about Odd Mage, of all things, for a period of time. Yet the deck was a vastly inferior version of Reno Mage in wild. Even the Even Lock deck saw considerably less play in wild than it did in standard. Please don't try to say that Genn & Baku were considered as big of a problem in wild as they were in standard considering fewer of the decks saw play in wild AND in wild it's much easier to stabalize against the aggression with some classes (one glaring example being Voidcaller into Void Lord). It's interesting you criticize my assumptions and then try to assert your own baseless assumptions instead, especially when they are picked apart as easily.
I'm well aware that wild has different standards for balancing and a distinct pool of players. I didn't argue that every card that is a problem in standard must be nerfed in wild as well, I said that if a card is so problematic that it has to be HoFed/nerfed in standard it's reasonable to assume that the same logic applies to that card in wild, if not necessarily to the same extent. If Genn and Baku make games extremely predictable and repetitive in standard then it stands to reason the same is true for wild, even if the cards might not be as strong there.
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Are you actually going to answer where the evidence is for T5 deciding to nerf Genn/Baku in wild or are you intentionally trying to throw the conversation in a different direction? You can't just say that cards are randomly nerfed at times as a strong indicator that Genn/Baku could be nerfed. It is still out of thin air guesswork with no concrete foundation to stand on.
Your demand for evidence is disingenuous and a non-argument. We haven't had prior warning for previous changes so you can't hold my lack of evidence now as evidence to the contrary. How are you so bad at this? I'm not arguing that we know these cards are going to be nerfed, you're the one insisting that they definitely aren't because "card game experience" and "no evidence" or whatever.
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Point out to me how I mocked any person here and I'll gladly apologize.
"Despite your call to ax every thing you find irritating to play with, even when said aggressive decks actually under perform with win rates from more consistent older aggro decks (ie Pre nerf Pirate Warrior), that doesn't mean your personal preference has any meaningful say in what gets removed from the game."
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However, I know I did not. I'm all for "mocking" (breaking apart) weak arguments or biased rationales to nerf something when the ideas are deserving of it. If you say a non-tier 0 deck should be nerfed, and all the reasons you provide for that argument is that you find the match-up boring then you should expect that I will provide counter arguments that point out your bias and why it shouldn't be nerfed for the reasons that person provided. I am well aware of the difference between mocking/flaming a person and opposing emotionless ideas and arguments.
Clearly you're not as aware of that difference as you believe. And if your "counter-argument" to a subjective opinion is that that opinion doesn't matter (but yours somehow does?) then you're being a hypocrite and I will call you on it. Tough titties.
They're already sort of doing this by buffing/nerfing and rotating cards mid-season rather than at the start of the year. Clearly the devs understand that the game gets stale after long periods without new content or changes.
I wouldn't mind a rotating list of older cards, although I would have it replace basic/classic so there wouldn't be an evergreen card pool, and I'd probably have rotations occur a bit slower, maybe once every three/four months or so, timed to fall in between set releases. Oh and I'd probably only rotate about a quarter of this set out at a time so there's still some level of consistency.
It's actually quite relevant. I already mentioned before that more established card games, which HS very much follows the formula of, created formats both for a more static format and one that is quite fluid. If a player has little to no knowledge of the past giants/successes of CCGs, including how they generally have tried to design their various formats, then a newer player would be less likely to understand why HS making its own semi-static format & fluid format would make sense for this game. Hell, even throwing out terms like "eternal format" has the chance to fly completely over the head of some players who only have the knowledge of Hearthstone for a CCG. The relevance is in the breaking down of previous CCG static vs fluid formats if you just cave to every complaint and nerf every complained about card & deck in both standard and wild, because then you no longer have any format in Hearthstone that is static or semi-static, but merely two completely fluid formats with the only difference being the overall card pools.
It's one of the most commonly used fallacies. If you have an argument to make based on your extensive experience with other card games, make the hecking argument instead of boasting. Hearthstone doesn't have any static formats: wild is constantly expanding and standard is constantly changing, not to mention card nerfs and buffs affecting both of them. The analogy to other card games doesn't work either, for one because hearthstone is a digital card game, which means it isn't limited to the tools available to paper card games (we can actually nerf and buff cards), and two because it has it's own fairly unique design philosophy. But again, if you want to make some sort of argument here, you actually have to make it instead of just coyly referring to it.
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Is my argument any worse than somebody saying that Genn & Baku needs nerfs because they're stale & 'unbeatable'?
Yes, yes it's much worse, because you aren't really presenting arguments, just fallacies and assertions. It's painfully easy to argue that Genn and Baku being tossed out of standard a year early indicates that 1) a large number of players hate these cards 2) HS devs agree that they are a problem. If that is the case then it's not at all unreasonable to assume that the same holds true for wild.
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There has been zero evidence to suggest Blizzard is currently considering nerfing Genn/Baku at the moment so the opposition to my side of things is just as made up. At least on my end I brought up that other cards & entire decks technically create staleness in the format (and those are not nerfed). Genn & Baku are not even tier 0 (which is almost always when Blizzard steps in to make balance passes in wild). There is currently no objective grounds or hints from Blizzard HQ that either card will be nerfed.
Do you have some sort of personal connection with T5? How much of an advance notice did you get about Mind Blast getting HoFed or Aviana getting nerfed? Blizzard has pulled unexpected card changes on us all the time, if anything the way they're keeping players informed every time they choose not to do anything about Big Priest is unusual.
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You've established that a forum of public opinion is full of opinions. While I know my take on things is certainly not objective is still does nothing to prove any other opinion here so pointing out that I also have an opinion ultimately accomplishes nothing. I'm still waiting for the logical argument that impossibly proves that most wild players want Genn/Baku nerfed, or that they need to be nerfed.
I'm not the one who tried to ridicule someone's opinion because it was an opinion. You did that. Pointing out that you're standing knee-deep in subjectivity trying to mock others for expressing their views addresses another non-argument you made and (apparently) has caused you to recant this earlier position. So I wouldn't say nothing was accomplished.
If you're waiting for an impossibility then I sure hope you're the patient type. Sigh.
I just had another cool idea for how Baku could be changed (although this might make her too strong). What if instead of giving you an upgraded Hero Power she lets you choose one of the alternate Hero Powers from the Dalaran Heist adventure? Ignoring that this would probably never happen, given that Blizzard usually just buffs or nerfs cards instead of changing them, do y'all think it would be a cool change? It could allow for some really exciting new strategies for classes that are limited by their Hero Powers. For example, an odd control Hunter might be viable!
Sure it's a cool idea but I think it would only exacerbate the problem. It's not addressing the fundamental problem with these cards, namely that they're always affecting the game from the get-go, resulting in fairly predictable gameplay that relies heavily on the hero power (and thus is even less dependent on draws). On top of that, these quest reward heropowers are arguably stronger than the upgraded standard ones and certainly have a lot more build-around potential.
I have to say I don't think Genn and Baku can be effectively nerfed without fundamentally altering how they work. That's probably why they got unceremoniously yeeted out of standard to begin with. Sure you could make the minions themselves total garbage, but they kinda already are and that's not why they're being played. The hero powers are really tricky to rebalance since they copied the Justicar Trueheart ones instead of implementing new ones from the get-go, and whereas with Genn there's not much you can change without introducing fractions into the game.
If nothing else I just hope Blizzard learns to avoid this type of hard deckbuilding restriction balancing (see also: Keleseth), which I find to be unpleasant to play against and typically very hard to balance.
I think a log of all card nerfs/buffs/changes could be done and would be a neat feature.
We already have that actually :) And card changes listed in those patches are also associated with cards and shown on their card pages, for example look at Molten Giant's page.
I wasn't exactly clear, I meant more of a card gallery of all the individual cards that have been changed over the years. Sure you can find that information if you dig through all of the changelogs, but it's not the most convenient method. I hadn't noticed that the card database also lists changes, and that's a great feature, but again, unless you already know which cards have been changed you'd have to go through all of the cards to find out.
I understand if it's not remotely a priority, but I think it would be cool to have a sort of rogues gallery of all the cards that had to die for their sins.
I think a log of all card nerfs/buffs/changes could be done and would be a neat feature, but a compendium of stages of design seems very pie-in-the-sky. We're certainly not ever going to get the complete behind the scenes picture, but even what little information is publicly available is in interviews with the devs throughout the years and in different formats, so it'd be a hassle to track it all down.
I wouldn't mind if someone compiled it for us because I'm always interested in game design insider information, but who's gonna do it?
What you call elitism I call experience with other games. It's up to you feel offended by what I said.
I call that an appeal to authority. If you have an argument to make it can stand on its own merits without you thumping your chest about your experience. You're not the only one who's played other card games and I don't see how that's terribly relevant to Hearthstone design philosophy.
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Extremely warped? T5 hasn't nerfed Genn or Baku, nor have they hinted that they are going to. Debate with me all you want, but it still isn't changing the fact that the cards are currently here to stay. :)
"Thing hasn't happened yet so it can't happen" is a terrible argument. By that logic heavier-than-air flight was impossible prior to the wright brothers. Before the Patches and Raza nerfs Blizzard had never touched a Wild card. There's a first time for everything.
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Despite your call to ax every thing you find irritating to play with, even when said aggressive decks actually under perform with win rates from more consistent older aggro decks (ie Pre nerf Pirate Warrior), that doesn't mean your personal preference has any meaningful say in what gets removed from the game. The goal of wild isn't to more or less make it the same thing as standard just with a bigger card pool.
Another non-argument. I can turn this same illogic back around on you and insist that just because *your personal preference* is for Wild to remain static and untouched doesn't mean T5 are going to act accordingly.
Obviously our opinions on card game design are subjective preferences, yours included.
Kind of unplayable without one more generator, I really don't want to rely on EVIL Cable Rat in an aggro deck.
I haven't played in standard for a long period of time, but didn't token druid used to run two copies of the cable rat?
Yes, but the problem is that you're not doing cool 4/4 lackey combos until turn 6, where a lot of the time you probably already used your lackeys cause they synergize with your earlier magic carpet/4 mana 8/8 play. Considering that Warlock only has four cards to get lackeys (the cable rat and recruiter), I just don't see warlock drawing fast enough to justify a 5 mana 4/4
I'm pretty sure there's still a WL lackey generator to be revealed. And the fact that EVIL Genius generates two lackeys shouldn't be ignored either. I agree that I'd rather not put Cable rat in my zoo deck, but if the new Lackey card is decent you might not have to to make this work.
Kind of unplayable without one more generator, I really don't want to rely on EVIL Cable Rat in an aggro deck.
To me, at least, Warlock is looking more midrange. I think it is probably going to move away from the all in carpet/grim rally strategy, and towards things like EVIL Recruiter, Riftcleaver, and Diseased Vulture.
I disagree. Lackeys are 1 mana minions so they go great with the carpet setup, especially after Tekahn buffs them. You might cut rallies and scarab eggs to make room for more lackeys but I doubt you'd want to touch carpet or the overall 1-drop zoo theme.
I want to call this crazy powerful but I'm going to temper my expectations slightly due to how situational this is. If the other lackey generator for WL is as good as EVIL Genius then Zoolock just got very real.
In seriousness though, this seems overcosted. The effect has obvious synergies with Hyenas and Timber Wolves but that's not enough to warrant playing the spear over Headhunter's Hatchet, which effectively does the same amount of damage for 1 mana less.
Piranha Launcher 2.0: Slightly improved, still bad.
I guess ask yourself which is better, Scavenging Hyena + immediately buff it by +4/+2 or better? OR, for the same mana cost, buff it by +2/+1 this turn, and then +2/+1 next turn (assuming both the Hyena and your weapon are still around)?
And then you answer, "Scavenging Hyena + Hounds is objectively better in every way."
That's a false dichotomy. You could include both in your deck. If it cost one less Beast hunters would instantly cut their hatchets for this so they could run it alongside 'hounds and springpaws.
Even if we set aside the false binary your analysis is still skewed. Hounds is situational: it requires enemy minions on board. The weapon can be played proactively, so you don't have to wait for the ideal Hyena turn to use it, and it comes down earlier. Does that make Desert Spear better than Unleash the Hounds? No, and if you'd left it at that it would have been fine, but instead you're fallaciously arguing that Hounds is objectively better in every way, and that's just silly and hyperbolic.
In seriousness though, this seems overcosted. The effect has obvious synergies with Hyenas and Timber Wolves but that's not enough to warrant playing the spear over Headhunter's Hatchet, which effectively does the same amount of damage for 1 mana less.
Piranha Launcher 2.0: Slightly improved, still bad.
I don't really like it. Can't quite put my finger on it, but the card seems rather clunky and awkward to use, and I can easily imagine situations where one half of the card text or the other is going to be a nuisance.
Now sure, it can be argued that that's a design feature, just like with UI, but this is nowhere near as powerful so I don't think it was warranted. I would've preferred this as a slightly cheaper choose one spell.
Yeh - it's not great, but the free taunt guy helps a lot, IMO.
If you're playing the quest (which I think is probably the only non-token direction to go), and you're playing off curve until turn 6, you're probably going to need something like this (plus the taunt guy) to try and stabilize.
The Arcane Taunter definitely helps, but UI had the OG Tyrant back in the day so it still comes out looking much stronger. Overflow has a natural counter-synergy with the druid quest in that floating mana turn after turn probably means you'll have a lot of cards in hand. Stalladris, Hidden Oasis and Anubisath Defender are gonna have to put in a lot of work to make the deck playable. Probably needs more support to be viable.
I recall the designers mentioning that new Lackeys would be introduced in the sets following RoS, but so far we haven't seen any. The five lackeys we have are each themed after one of the five ringleaders of the EVIL gang (Witchy = Hagatha, Goblin = Dr. Boom, Kobold = Togwaggle, Faceless = Lazul, Ethereal = Rafaam), which raises the question whether we'll see a full cycle of new lackeys, or only one (or two, or...), not to mention what sort of flavour this new lackey will have.
Personally I think we'll probably see only one new lackey, and it's likely going to be some denizen of Uldum that has sided with EVIL. Mummy Lackey maybe? Regarding the card's battlecry, I think the most obvious is "give a minion reborn".
I don't really like it. Can't quite put my finger on it, but the card seems rather clunky and awkward to use, and I can easily imagine situations where one half of the card text or the other is going to be a nuisance.
Now sure, it can be argued that that's a design feature, just like with UI, but this is nowhere near as powerful so I don't think it was warranted. I would've preferred this as a slightly cheaper choose one spell.
Wrong, wrong, WRONG. For starters, Standard is the primary HS game mode. The devs said at the outset that they consider Wild to be a fun bonus mode a la arena or tavern brawls.
"Mike Donais: There’s still a good amount of people playing Wild. The thing is, I think – like you said – Standard is super healthy and fun, and there’s good variety, and I think Wild is more there for you, like Arena or Tavern Brawl, for when you want to take a break. You’ve had enough Standard, you’re tired of losing to X super popular deck, and you need to try something out, where you won’t run into that deck as much, and Wild is perfect for that."
Any change is going to cause some amount of confusion. That doesn't mean there shouldn't be any changes, it means that the need for changes has to be weighed against potential player confusion. It means that the least confusing option is the most appealing. What's *more* confusing, occasionally nerfing problem cards in all formats or coming up with an ever-expanding list of formats with format-specific card pools and ban lists?
I'm not the one who made the argument. Member this?
"Are you actually going to answer where the evidence is for T5 deciding to nerf Genn/Baku in wild or are you intentionally trying to throw the conversation in a different direction?"
If you have zero evidence one way or the other, where do you get off demanding this evidence of others and then using a lack of evidence to imply the opposite is true? When caught in a fallacious argument, why try to pretend that I'm the one making it? I'm not a goldfish, I can still vaguely recall the things you said two posts ago. If you can't argue your points honestly consider maybe conceding those points.
Apples to oranges comparisons all the way down. G&B subvert the rules of HS in a significant way that doesn't apply to any of the cards or decks you listed, and you're *well aware* of the argument, so I really don't understand the compulsion to make these false equivocations. Improved hero powers being active on turn one independent of what you draw or what you choose to play on turn one is a massive, massive change to how hearthstone works fundamentally, and the fact that these decks can then lean on their hero power makes them *even less* draw dependent than any other type of deck. For any other card in the game, the fact that you have to draw and play it to get its effect is one of the primary balancing factors.
If cards can be nerfed without prior warning then your argument is the pointless one, not mine. "Are you actually going to answer where the evidence is for T5 deciding to nerf Genn/Baku in wild..."
I didn't call you a flamer. The words I used were "ridicule" and "mock", and I stand by them. And to be clear, I don't have a problem with mockery if it's deserved, I have a problem with mocking someone in lieu of an argument, and especially when you're guilty of the same thing you're mocking the other for, in this case, expressing opinions.
While I don't mind the idea, I think it goes against the primary hearthstone design philosophy principle of keeping things simple, so I don't think it very likely that something like this would be implemented.
As others have pointed out, creating essentially infinite custom game modes would reduce the number of players per game mode, resulting in increased loading times. Not only that, supposing some of these modes catch on and gain a dedicated following, there is the risk of balkanising the player base into distinct groups that only play one mode or the other and don't really interact or overlap, which would hurt the game long term by making it much harder for the devs to cater to an increasingly fractured audience.
It's funny, Titanic Lackey's effect was one of the more obvious possible lackey effects I considered but ultimately dismissed as a bit too bland and mediocre (the other really obvious one being "draw a card").
I certainly don't mind having gotten it wrong, I think Reborn would've felt very similar to witchy lackey in actual use and it'd have really busted high-roll potential with certain cards, like leeroy or swingy deathrattles. It just seemed like the most obvious prediction to make because it's the new keyword, not necessarily the best design decision.
I think Titanic Lackey's inclusion in the pool is a slight nerf to the overall power level of lackey cards, which is fine. It has it's uses and I'm sure there will be situations where getting the taunty boy is the nuts.
Felsoul Inquisitor is a demon with lifesteal and it never sees play. What makes Scalehide good is Rush + means to buff it/copy it (Rogue quest + bounce, Dire Frenzy + Master's Call, stitching it onto other beasts with DK Rexxar). If some sort of build-a-demon effect gets added to the game, sure, the card will become interesting in that context, but even then the lack of rush hurts bigtime. You don't want to give the opponent the option to remove the minion without healing you.
I honestly wouldn't mind this as a temporary arena or brawl format (like the dual class arena at Halloween). Sure, the treasure cards are busted, but so long as you get matched with players with an equal amount of wins the crazy should balance out, right?
I don't play Arena all that much but I'd definitely give dungeon-arena a few runs.
You're moving the goalposts from "static" to "fairly static" and you're ignoring the substantive differences I've already pointed out between paper and digital card games: magic or Yu-gi-oh can't just nerf a card so their only options are banlists and multiple formats. Hearthstone has a different design philosophy, a key element of which is keeping things simple and fairly casual, something that pretty much excludes the possibility of 14 different formats with varying card pools and restrictions. Simply pointing out that other games do it that way is a poor argument for why it ought to be that way in HS, and I think that by and large that argument is refuted by the dev team's decisions over the years.
Preposterous argument. I'm sorry, but do *you* have a list of names of all the players who think G&B are perfectly fine and shouldn't have been rotated out of standard early? Do you have a list of their hair colour and favourite pop songs?
Incomplete information is still information, and the G&B nerf gives us quite a bit of circumstantial evidence to work with. Just because I cannot present you with a quantity or proportion of players who hate G&B doesn't mean you can dismiss the argument. Try again. If you had a survey of 1000 random players you'd have more information and a better argument than you do now. Incomplete information is still better than no information.
I'm well aware that wild has different standards for balancing and a distinct pool of players. I didn't argue that every card that is a problem in standard must be nerfed in wild as well, I said that if a card is so problematic that it has to be HoFed/nerfed in standard it's reasonable to assume that the same logic applies to that card in wild, if not necessarily to the same extent. If Genn and Baku make games extremely predictable and repetitive in standard then it stands to reason the same is true for wild, even if the cards might not be as strong there.
Your demand for evidence is disingenuous and a non-argument. We haven't had prior warning for previous changes so you can't hold my lack of evidence now as evidence to the contrary. How are you so bad at this? I'm not arguing that we know these cards are going to be nerfed, you're the one insisting that they definitely aren't because "card game experience" and "no evidence" or whatever.
"Despite your call to ax every thing you find irritating to play with, even when said aggressive decks actually under perform with win rates from more consistent older aggro decks (ie Pre nerf Pirate Warrior), that doesn't mean your personal preference has any meaningful say in what gets removed from the game."
Clearly you're not as aware of that difference as you believe. And if your "counter-argument" to a subjective opinion is that that opinion doesn't matter (but yours somehow does?) then you're being a hypocrite and I will call you on it. Tough titties.
They're already sort of doing this by buffing/nerfing and rotating cards mid-season rather than at the start of the year. Clearly the devs understand that the game gets stale after long periods without new content or changes.
I wouldn't mind a rotating list of older cards, although I would have it replace basic/classic so there wouldn't be an evergreen card pool, and I'd probably have rotations occur a bit slower, maybe once every three/four months or so, timed to fall in between set releases. Oh and I'd probably only rotate about a quarter of this set out at a time so there's still some level of consistency.
It's one of the most commonly used fallacies. If you have an argument to make based on your extensive experience with other card games, make the hecking argument instead of boasting. Hearthstone doesn't have any static formats: wild is constantly expanding and standard is constantly changing, not to mention card nerfs and buffs affecting both of them. The analogy to other card games doesn't work either, for one because hearthstone is a digital card game, which means it isn't limited to the tools available to paper card games (we can actually nerf and buff cards), and two because it has it's own fairly unique design philosophy. But again, if you want to make some sort of argument here, you actually have to make it instead of just coyly referring to it.
Yes, yes it's much worse, because you aren't really presenting arguments, just fallacies and assertions. It's painfully easy to argue that Genn and Baku being tossed out of standard a year early indicates that 1) a large number of players hate these cards 2) HS devs agree that they are a problem. If that is the case then it's not at all unreasonable to assume that the same holds true for wild.
Do you have some sort of personal connection with T5? How much of an advance notice did you get about Mind Blast getting HoFed or Aviana getting nerfed? Blizzard has pulled unexpected card changes on us all the time, if anything the way they're keeping players informed every time they choose not to do anything about Big Priest is unusual.
I'm not the one who tried to ridicule someone's opinion because it was an opinion. You did that. Pointing out that you're standing knee-deep in subjectivity trying to mock others for expressing their views addresses another non-argument you made and (apparently) has caused you to recant this earlier position. So I wouldn't say nothing was accomplished.
If you're waiting for an impossibility then I sure hope you're the patient type. Sigh.
Sure it's a cool idea but I think it would only exacerbate the problem. It's not addressing the fundamental problem with these cards, namely that they're always affecting the game from the get-go, resulting in fairly predictable gameplay that relies heavily on the hero power (and thus is even less dependent on draws). On top of that, these quest reward heropowers are arguably stronger than the upgraded standard ones and certainly have a lot more build-around potential.
Imagine being able to Tome of Origination a Voidlord or Mal'Ganis into play on turn two. Yikes.
I have to say I don't think Genn and Baku can be effectively nerfed without fundamentally altering how they work. That's probably why they got unceremoniously yeeted out of standard to begin with. Sure you could make the minions themselves total garbage, but they kinda already are and that's not why they're being played. The hero powers are really tricky to rebalance since they copied the Justicar Trueheart ones instead of implementing new ones from the get-go, and whereas with Genn there's not much you can change without introducing fractions into the game.
If nothing else I just hope Blizzard learns to avoid this type of hard deckbuilding restriction balancing (see also: Keleseth), which I find to be unpleasant to play against and typically very hard to balance.
I wasn't exactly clear, I meant more of a card gallery of all the individual cards that have been changed over the years. Sure you can find that information if you dig through all of the changelogs, but it's not the most convenient method. I hadn't noticed that the card database also lists changes, and that's a great feature, but again, unless you already know which cards have been changed you'd have to go through all of the cards to find out.
I understand if it's not remotely a priority, but I think it would be cool to have a sort of rogues gallery of all the cards that had to die for their sins.
I think a log of all card nerfs/buffs/changes could be done and would be a neat feature, but a compendium of stages of design seems very pie-in-the-sky. We're certainly not ever going to get the complete behind the scenes picture, but even what little information is publicly available is in interviews with the devs throughout the years and in different formats, so it'd be a hassle to track it all down.
I wouldn't mind if someone compiled it for us because I'm always interested in game design insider information, but who's gonna do it?
I call that an appeal to authority. If you have an argument to make it can stand on its own merits without you thumping your chest about your experience. You're not the only one who's played other card games and I don't see how that's terribly relevant to Hearthstone design philosophy.
"Thing hasn't happened yet so it can't happen" is a terrible argument. By that logic heavier-than-air flight was impossible prior to the wright brothers. Before the Patches and Raza nerfs Blizzard had never touched a Wild card. There's a first time for everything.
Another non-argument. I can turn this same illogic back around on you and insist that just because *your personal preference* is for Wild to remain static and untouched doesn't mean T5 are going to act accordingly.
Obviously our opinions on card game design are subjective preferences, yours included.
I'm pretty sure there's still a WL lackey generator to be revealed. And the fact that EVIL Genius generates two lackeys shouldn't be ignored either. I agree that I'd rather not put Cable rat in my zoo deck, but if the new Lackey card is decent you might not have to to make this work.
I disagree. Lackeys are 1 mana minions so they go great with the carpet setup, especially after Tekahn buffs them. You might cut rallies and scarab eggs to make room for more lackeys but I doubt you'd want to touch carpet or the overall 1-drop zoo theme.
I want to call this crazy powerful but I'm going to temper my expectations slightly due to how situational this is. If the other lackey generator for WL is as good as EVIL Genius then Zoolock just got very real.
That's a false dichotomy. You could include both in your deck. If it cost one less Beast hunters would instantly cut their hatchets for this so they could run it alongside 'hounds and springpaws.
Even if we set aside the false binary your analysis is still skewed. Hounds is situational: it requires enemy minions on board. The weapon can be played proactively, so you don't have to wait for the ideal Hyena turn to use it, and it comes down earlier. Does that make Desert Spear better than Unleash the Hounds? No, and if you'd left it at that it would have been fine, but instead you're fallaciously arguing that Hounds is objectively better in every way, and that's just silly and hyperbolic.
I too enjoy spearing desserts.
In seriousness though, this seems overcosted. The effect has obvious synergies with Hyenas and Timber Wolves but that's not enough to warrant playing the spear over Headhunter's Hatchet, which effectively does the same amount of damage for 1 mana less.
Piranha Launcher 2.0: Slightly improved, still bad.
The Arcane Taunter definitely helps, but UI had the OG Tyrant back in the day so it still comes out looking much stronger. Overflow has a natural counter-synergy with the druid quest in that floating mana turn after turn probably means you'll have a lot of cards in hand. Stalladris, Hidden Oasis and Anubisath Defender are gonna have to put in a lot of work to make the deck playable. Probably needs more support to be viable.
I recall the designers mentioning that new Lackeys would be introduced in the sets following RoS, but so far we haven't seen any. The five lackeys we have are each themed after one of the five ringleaders of the EVIL gang (Witchy = Hagatha, Goblin = Dr. Boom, Kobold = Togwaggle, Faceless = Lazul, Ethereal = Rafaam), which raises the question whether we'll see a full cycle of new lackeys, or only one (or two, or...), not to mention what sort of flavour this new lackey will have.
Personally I think we'll probably see only one new lackey, and it's likely going to be some denizen of Uldum that has sided with EVIL. Mummy Lackey maybe? Regarding the card's battlecry, I think the most obvious is "give a minion reborn".
I don't really like it. Can't quite put my finger on it, but the card seems rather clunky and awkward to use, and I can easily imagine situations where one half of the card text or the other is going to be a nuisance.
Now sure, it can be argued that that's a design feature, just like with UI, but this is nowhere near as powerful so I don't think it was warranted. I would've preferred this as a slightly cheaper choose one spell.