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.
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?
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.
Would it be better if it said "at least a little"?
This ain't being out of tune with Wild, this is setting expectations. I don't know why folks think that Wild is going to get this massive balance overhaul. Blizzard has repeatedly stated that the format is not meant to be balanced except in the most exceptional of circumstances. One can desire more, but there's no reason to throw an attack at Avalon for bringing us the news.
I agree with Avalon, we can be confident that Questline will receive a little bit of a tone down and that we should not expect massive changes.
I super messed this post up, my apologies! Things have been going a bit too fast and I'm a bit disappointed no one on staff figured out I screwed up and then alerted me to that fact. More care will be taken in the future!
Its so rare to make a mistake this big. I can't even recall the last time it happened.
The article has been updated with accurate information. You are all right,
The mount in WoW is actually a part of a Mercenaries cross-game promotion.
The Hearthstone rewards are a part of a 6-month WoW subscription.
My previous comment still holds true though, this is a great deal for players of WoW and players of Hearthstone. If you only play Hearthstone and want to experience all that content, buying the 6-month subscription makes a ton of sense since you'll be getting a discount.
I highly recommend giving World of Warcraft a shot though - you could even try out Classic instead if you don't want to give Shadowlands (up to level 50) a go (bonus points since Classic is 100% part of your subscription, Shadowlands end-game is not). You might meet some familiar characters in Hearthstone and learn a thing or two about their stories!
It sounds like you aren't have fun with the game anymore. If you don't want to be a part of Hearthstone anymore, why continue to talk about it? I've found so much freedom in completing cutting off games that I no longer care about with little to no regret - bound to dailies just in case I care in the future I will not.
I think another big thing to point out about potential tributes is how it sounds like Overwatch just doesn't want a main character to be an exact real-life reference to someone anymore. Having some random character in a story is much less risky. I fully expect we'll continue to see players in World of Warcraft get items and characters as a tribute and Hearthstone we will certainly still see flavor text and cards that relate to players, especially if one could feign ignorance about it.
Just, no game-defining characters. Having to rewrite a major character that gets used in promotions and out-of-game content is too much of a risk if you want to keep things clean.
Yeah, that's the biggest downside if this becomes a thing and applies to Heroic as well. I like the idea that Casual gets to pick from the whole pool and Heroic is restricted just like Arena since its supposed to be the competitive format of Duels.
Not much choice there since League of Legends itself isn't on mobile (Wild Rift is an entirely different game, easier mechanics, separate from League). I think TFT would take a small hit to players if it was in its own client, though it would certainly get League players to stop crying about it "causing performance problems" for the main game (yeah, better get rid of URF too then /s).
There's just so much value baked into using your main game as the launcher for sister games. If it wasn't for Out of Cards, and if Hearthstone had a Battlegrounds-only client, I can assure you I wouldn't bother going for even the monthly card backs. But, since its there and the client is open, its a great reminder!
You are certainly allowed to express your own opinions, I hope I didn't make it seem like that wasn't the case!
This is one of those important reasons why its important to provide constructive feedback when saying things like the game quality has gone downhill. Letting people know why you feel that way can open up a completely different side of the discussion. For example, I agree that the pacing right now does not feel great and I there are things I miss about the older versions of the game; This is also why I do not play very much constructed right now. I also cannot believe that Blizzard consistently prints all this mana cheating insanity, only to go "lol guess we'll tone that down" a month later.
But, even with that opinion out of the way, objectively, Hearthstone is in its best place as far as game balance is concerned. Its not what I like about the game, but it is a much better environment than the one we had in years prior. The mini sets also keep things very interesting outside of the consistency in balance changes, which was so desired.
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.
Haha, oops. After proofreading 5 times you would think a huge mistake like that would have been caught - fixing it, thank you.
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?
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.
FWIW folks responsible for game balance are not the same people that are developing new modes.
Would it be better if it said "at least a little"?
This ain't being out of tune with Wild, this is setting expectations. I don't know why folks think that Wild is going to get this massive balance overhaul. Blizzard has repeatedly stated that the format is not meant to be balanced except in the most exceptional of circumstances. One can desire more, but there's no reason to throw an attack at Avalon for bringing us the news.
I agree with Avalon, we can be confident that Questline will receive a little bit of a tone down and that we should not expect massive changes.
If you have it set to auto-renew you definitely will. I don't think you will with auto-renew off, but I could be wrong.
Tons to do in World of Warcraft if you don't want to raid!
WoW will always be a gear game though at the end of the day. Nothing else really "matters", much like all MMOs.
I super messed this post up, my apologies! Things have been going a bit too fast and I'm a bit disappointed no one on staff figured out I screwed up and then alerted me to that fact. More care will be taken in the future!
Its so rare to make a mistake this big. I can't even recall the last time it happened.
The article has been updated with accurate information. You are all right,
My previous comment still holds true though, this is a great deal for players of WoW and players of Hearthstone. If you only play Hearthstone and want to experience all that content, buying the 6-month subscription makes a ton of sense since you'll be getting a discount.
I highly recommend giving World of Warcraft a shot though - you could even try out Classic instead if you don't want to give Shadowlands (up to level 50) a go (bonus points since Classic is 100% part of your subscription, Shadowlands end-game is not). You might meet some familiar characters in Hearthstone and learn a thing or two about their stories!
It sounds like you aren't have fun with the game anymore. If you don't want to be a part of Hearthstone anymore, why continue to talk about it? I've found so much freedom in completing cutting off games that I no longer care about with little to no regret - bound to dailies just in case I care in the future I will not.
I think another big thing to point out about potential tributes is how it sounds like Overwatch just doesn't want a main character to be an exact real-life reference to someone anymore. Having some random character in a story is much less risky. I fully expect we'll continue to see players in World of Warcraft get items and characters as a tribute and Hearthstone we will certainly still see flavor text and cards that relate to players, especially if one could feign ignorance about it.
Just, no game-defining characters. Having to rewrite a major character that gets used in promotions and out-of-game content is too much of a risk if you want to keep things clean.
Yeah, that's the biggest downside if this becomes a thing and applies to Heroic as well. I like the idea that Casual gets to pick from the whole pool and Heroic is restricted just like Arena since its supposed to be the competitive format of Duels.
That would be a very interesting way of doing it.
Large update here with tons of information.
We're still working on getting breakdowns of each character put together, that's coming soon!
That's great to hear! We certainly haven't made any changes on our end :D
12 mana, problem solved
Not much choice there since League of Legends itself isn't on mobile (Wild Rift is an entirely different game, easier mechanics, separate from League). I think TFT would take a small hit to players if it was in its own client, though it would certainly get League players to stop crying about it "causing performance problems" for the main game (yeah, better get rid of URF too then /s).
There's just so much value baked into using your main game as the launcher for sister games. If it wasn't for Out of Cards, and if Hearthstone had a Battlegrounds-only client, I can assure you I wouldn't bother going for even the monthly card backs. But, since its there and the client is open, its a great reminder!
You are certainly allowed to express your own opinions, I hope I didn't make it seem like that wasn't the case!
This is one of those important reasons why its important to provide constructive feedback when saying things like the game quality has gone downhill. Letting people know why you feel that way can open up a completely different side of the discussion. For example, I agree that the pacing right now does not feel great and I there are things I miss about the older versions of the game; This is also why I do not play very much constructed right now. I also cannot believe that Blizzard consistently prints all this mana cheating insanity, only to go "lol guess we'll tone that down" a month later.
But, even with that opinion out of the way, objectively, Hearthstone is in its best place as far as game balance is concerned. Its not what I like about the game, but it is a much better environment than the one we had in years prior. The mini sets also keep things very interesting outside of the consistency in balance changes, which was so desired.