It'll be on Tuesday, I'm pretty sure they've never made an announcement on a Monday.
I'm not a lore nerd so I honestly have no idea what it could be about. My expectation is that we get a LEGIT new mechanic that sticks around, maybe not as longer as discover has but hopefully not for just one expansion.
Also, don't think this entire year is dedicated to Outlands like some people, it just doesn't make sense in the realm of Hearthstone to stay in one general area for an entire year.
I just want to see what the new game mode is about.
Hi, I just wanted to make this thread to discuss how HS could potentially learn from the innovations that LoR introduced and make the game better. Of course, HS is very unlikely to change any of its core gameplay even if it would be an improvement (due to it confusing new and returning players) but I think it could be an interesting thought experiment. Alternatively, this could be a new game mode!
1. Spell Mana: In LoR up to 3 of your unspent Mana can be kept as Spell Mana, which you can only spend on spells. HS could just directly implement Spell Mana, but I think it'd be more fitting for how HS works to make it so that any unspent Mana you have at the end of the turn reduces the cost of your next Hero Power by that much. This would allow players to play off-curve more often and might occasionally lead people to purposefully not spend Mana to save it for their next Hero Power. Additionally, it would make Inspire cards more interesting and viable.
2. Rounds instead of turns: In LoR, players also gain Mana at the start of their opponent's turn, and whenever a player plays a card the other player may play a card in response. One player has all the odd Mana turns and the other player has all the even Mana turns. HS could have a similar version of this, where whenever a player plays a minion their opponent gets initiative. Spells and minions would still resolve immediately, but with initiative swapping the opponent would still have the chance to react. For example, if your opponent plays a charge minion you could play a Taunt minion in response, or destroy the charge minion with a spell. Attacking would still work like normal and not swap initiative, which would encourage players to attack at the start of their turn. The advantage of this system is that it allows for counterplay and is a lot more engaging. It also eliminates the advantage for the first player.
What do you all think about these changes? Would this work in regular HS, or would it be better as a new mode?
1: As of a year ago when Saviors of Uldum launched, the "Unspent Mana" mechanic was first introduced for Druid. The mechanic does fine and shined when SoU launched since Quest druid was one of the top classes during that meta before the Doom in the Tomb event. With that being said, I think Druid should be the only class that uses this mechanic since the quest changes its hero power. Then you run into the issue of "How many unspent mana crystals count as one mana crystal discount"? It needs to be significant because a Warlock losing 2 HP to draw a card does not feel good to play against if the just didn't spend their last two mana on the previous turn. I miss inspire as a keyword, it's just too hard to balance without the cards being trash.
2: Hearthstone is famous for its simplicity and its speed. It takes, on average for the average non-hyper pro streamer, around ten minutes to play a game of Hearthstone. I've played since Naxx, a ~10 minute game during commutes and downtime feels just as good then as it does now. I'm sure you've red the subreddit and I'm sure you've seen forum posts complaining about "Ropers" just burning the rope every turn. Imagine how horrible it would be for those players to lengthen a game even more if they had an opportunity to extend the game time every time you made a move. Just think on that one. One last thing on this paragraph, the player who goes first does not ALWAYS have the advantage.
I understand that you want more complexity for Hearthstone. I do too, but you have to understand that it simply cannot do that.
One can't attack Reddit guys for telling the truth. What we should expect from them to say? 'Congrats on your blunders, keep doing it...'? The blunders are not new, they are doing the same mistakes again and again. If you hit a wall with your head once or twice, ok, but if you do that for the 10th time, it's safe to say something is wrong with you.
People hated toxic and snowball cards & decks, guess what, we got those again, after like 10 similar in the past. Zero mana cards break every single expansion, yet they keep printing them. First, remove ramp (because it badly correlates with common HS strategies), then print ramp again to encourage more high-roll gameplay (if you draw, you win, if not you lose, nothing else there). Everybody wanted Keleseth to go, then they printed the new one.
(not only) Priests play 30-60 cards that don't start in their decks. In which card game universe is that normal? Write an article about class identity, then disregard it after two days, starting with Zephrys. Rogue plays like Priest and vice versa. Rogue can't kill anybody anymore, lol.
Half the classes worthless for 2 years, because you don't have testers (we are beta) or talent to be aware what's needed for the classes to be viable and balanced with other nuts you are printing. That certain classes will be worthless is so obvious to community even before card releases. Metas have 2 decks. Warped and dull.
Before, every 5th or 10th game was a clown fiesta, now... now, it's EVERY single game. I can't remember a single game recently that ended normally, within reasonable outcomes. Every game is fiesta, unbelievable things are happening, without any sense. What's currently happening in HS games simply doesn't have any sense. We can only watch how the game auto-plays everything.
....Believe it or not, after several nerfs, 15 Demon Hunter cards are still plain broken (just ask and I will list & argue each one)! Every DH card does 3X what other cards do. The class is prominent in everything (remember, DH weakness is single target removal). They spent all this time to give us a version of Pirate Warrior as a class? Greymane deported, so we can get a permanent one? Nobody will ever, until the end of the time, play 1hp 1 drop. Hardly any early game deck will be able to beat consistency of DH.
All that minion combat (the fundamental rule of the game) is no more, only blowout turns. Because of the same badly designed, toxic and rng cards printed again and again. I say - the same. It's not that moderate and controllable rng like before, but complete nonsense. Every other card is random; it's impossible to play around anything anymore ("created by"). Some classes can't win a single game without e.g. Box, Alex and payoff cards. Are people even playing those decks, when it's all about drawing one card, triggering it and hoping for the best!?! (...) (...) (...)
Now, it can be they do all this purposely; they sell the game to twitch chat looking for chaos, to casuals looking for easier time... then woe to us all the more so.
Constant bitching ≠ Actual constructive criticism, especially when the community complains about any deck/class at the top of any meta. If I were in Team 5, I wouldn't listen either.
"People hated toxic and snowball cards & decks" and they'll always exist, if the fact that those types of decks/cards have existed since Naxx doesn't reinforce that, nothing will. Barnes wasn't touched until 26AUG2019, not even a year ago. That should telegraph to all players that Team 5 likes swingy cards/decks that are OP. It doesn't matter how toxic they are to the game, Team 5 will allow it.
Playing cards that didn't start in your hand, deck, opponent's hand, opponent's deck has been normal from day 1, the amount has just increased. Is it fair? Nope. Can I do anything about it? Nope.
Class identity, not something that really exists in Hearthstone unfortunately, especially in Wild. Class identity is fluid since Standard rotation exists, if not all the expansions would feel the same. We had Frost Lich Jaina which depended on an Elemental minion type deck. Now we have (with no current success) no minion Mage, shit changes. We had a Dragon Hunter a few months ago and a few years ago we had a DK Rexxar deck which ran no minions either. So class identity is fluid. Honestly Team 5 should throw the idea out the window.
No one is a master at balance and predictability. Make no mistake that I acknowledge that the power level of Demon Hunter was, and still is, the intention of Team 5. Asking a bunch of people, who work on Hearthstone all day, to go and play it as much as possible to find all the OP strategies and bring them in line in a timely manner is just not feasible. Most of the balance issues are revealed when an expansion goes live, because there's a far greater number of players trying things out. Take Galakrond Shaman for example, Team 5 may have overlooked it because they were worried about work-related stuff and BAM. Fastest nerf in the West.
These cards (and class) will remain "Broken" until either Team 5 gets all the other classes to that level, or they decide to pull back Demon Hunter even further. And people will play 1 health 1 drops, if they have a good deathrattle or something.
Secret Mage, (Old) Quest Mage, Decks with Leeroy Jenkins as a finisher, (Wild) Secret Mage, and Shirvallah, the Tiger Paladin are just a few (off the top of my head) decks that have little or no minion combat. So minion combat is not as fundamental as you think. It's something to consider, but OTK decks don't care.
Twitch Viewership ≠ Actual Playerbase, it's incredibly disingenuous when this comparison is made for any game. And yeah, it's definitely for the viewership, for some odd reason. IDK I just like playing games instead of watching.
Like, I get that when a game after x years 'finally' gets a new, 10th class you want it to be a succesful one. And yes, giving it some overtuned cards to make up for its small collection in order to successfully compete with the other classes I can understand too.
But after nerfing the same deck of that class three times and to still have it be the best deck in standard (source) truly boggles my mind.
Quest rogue was considered a cockroach after it had to be nerfed twice (and that deck didn't practically dominate the meta for months on end by itself).
Why then, does everyone seem more okay with this deck? I see very little complaints this time around, unless I'm looking in the wrong places.
I hope the next expansion is a lot better balance-wise because if you ask me, this expansion was one of the worst in that regard. I still had fun, mind you, but the balance was extremely lacking.
Apologies for the salty flavored thread. I'm just genuinely curious if my perception is off, or if people really do tolerate the dominance of this deck more than they did with past 'oppressive' decks.
You don't ever want to nerf something to where it is absolutely unplayable. In your first paragraph you acknowledge that the Demon Hunter cards have to be overtuned for the class to be viable, unfortunately this does come with a cost and the same cost will be paid any other time a new class is introduced into Hearthstone. Additionally you have to think about the time and resources put into the new class to get new/returning players to start playing (again) so they can enjoy the game so much so that they invest money into it. On top of that, Hearthstone now has REAL competitors, MTGA being the biggest one in terms of card games. If Demon Hunter came out under performing it would have looked bad on Team 5 and players would just be like "OMG class is so bad, should have spent more time on giving me more free stuff" which wouldn't have peaked interest.
If I remember correctly, Quest Rogue was a problem for months on end. It was stifled by Hadronox druid, but once Spreading Plague was nerfed it creeped back into the meta, if I'm remembering this correctly of course. I could be wrong, I can't remember all too well because I had life events happening around that time.
I've never wanted a deck/card nerfed, I choose instead to either play that deck or find workarounds (but to be honest I mostly play whatever class/deck people are complaining about the most). The only deck that I have been okay with nerfing was Galakrond Shaman. Everyone (Even me) swarmed to it on release week for easy wins to the point to where not enough players were trying to counter to form the meta. That's just the natural order of a game like Hearthstone, and online games in general, people don't like losing. But to answer your question, I think Demon Hunter is in a fair spot right now, Galakrond Rogue (Fuck this deck), Pirate Warrior, Spell Druid, and Tempo Demon Hunter are all competent decks with strengths and weaknesses.
If you go onto the reddit (which is a bad idea due to the hivemind mentality) or the official Blizzard Hearthstone forums (which is just as bad if not a worse idea) you'll see that like every hour there're several posts complaining about Demon Hunter and "Blizz Evil", "Blizz Greedy", "Blizz don't know balance" shit flooding the forums (and players wonder why Team 5 rarely communicates with it's playerbase).
The next expansion will, like every other expansion, have some sort of OP strategy on release day. It will either be countered or nerfed depending on what Team 5 see in their statistics/data. Then the actual decks of the meta will rise after other balance changes and people will complain about them until the next expansion.
But to pretty much answer your entire post, there will always be one or two classes/decks on top no matter what, and you will always feel salty about them. It has to be Demon Hunter this expansion cycle for PR purposes and to "justify" their effort into the class for the lay person. I expect more nerfs coming to Demon Hunter during the next expansion to bring it even more in line if not remove it from the meta entirely for an expansion cycle.
If I'm coming off as an ass I apologize, people can't put someone's personality and mannerisms to text but I'm speaking from an objective point of view.
The trailer will probably be closer to mid July if it's releasing in August. I feel the single player adventure launched quite late? The virus could have a knock on effect *shrug*.
I don't think it released late, I feel that they pushed it back a bit so players doing feel the pre-announcement slog as long as they have in previous years. I would live if they did an announcement/teaser on the last day of the Felfire Festival.
A few weeks ago, Team 5 released a video asking for ideas for formats and modes from the community, asking us what we'd like to see in the game. There is no official way to go about this other than Tweeting them or posting in their official forums. On April the 14th, Team 5 is hosting an AMA to respond to our questions. I'd like for your help to get this to not only get their attention, but to get them to respond to this idea.
This is our opportunity, to not only get this in the face of the developers but to get more people behind this concept. I'll be posting this forum link in the AMA and I'd like for you guys to help by simply upvoting it.
I don't understand how giving your opponent renos hero power is better than having it yourself. A random spell cast on random targets is still a random spell regardless of where it came from.
It's mainly to remove their hero power if it's really good. Like say Frost Lich Jaina.
It's weird to see all these cards that literally would have 0 to no affect in Wild. They should probably un-nerf several more cards after the initial un-nerf.
Or, if nothing else? Print an equivalent of him as a replacement for one of the Legendary cards, if Edwin or Leeroy actually do get HOF'd. Look, it would be better than nothing.
They'll reprint him every year or so, and that's the best way to meet in the middle for F2P's and Blizzard. Print out a new card so resources have to be invested into it.
The technology exists to make this card actually happen and it would be a shame to see it die when Zayle, Shadow Cloak rotates out next year.
As for moving him to the classic set, he may well be the first. They haven't done it yet but he and Zayle definitely belong there.
I don't like it, it will clutter your collection, also 1000 times is a lot of times..
Would rather have achievements with real rewards, have no interest in full arts, specially since you can view them online.
You still get 100 gold for completing the classic set lol.
The collection manager currently needs some kind of overhaul IMO. Like I shouldn't be seeing a regular and golden copy of a card, it'd be nice if they were on the same screen when you clicked the card. Also if you wanted, you could disenchant the "Vanilla" version of the cards once you've earned the full art versions.
The numbers can be played with, I just threw those out there as an example. But I do feel that these should not be easy to obtain, these are free after all.
We need achievements, period. Viewing full art in card form has its' appeal to certain people, if you don't find it interesting that's fine.
It's be nice to earn some sort of reward if you completed card sets as well.
I enjoy the concept of this card, I wish they would abandon this effect when it rotates to Wild.
They could definitely update every board that comes out in the future along with adding cards with the same effect just different costs and such
Ticking Abomination intensifies.
It'll be on Tuesday, I'm pretty sure they've never made an announcement on a Monday.
I'm not a lore nerd so I honestly have no idea what it could be about. My expectation is that we get a LEGIT new mechanic that sticks around, maybe not as longer as discover has but hopefully not for just one expansion.
Also, don't think this entire year is dedicated to Outlands like some people, it just doesn't make sense in the realm of Hearthstone to stay in one general area for an entire year.
I just want to see what the new game mode is about.
1: As of a year ago when Saviors of Uldum launched, the "Unspent Mana" mechanic was first introduced for Druid. The mechanic does fine and shined when SoU launched since Quest druid was one of the top classes during that meta before the Doom in the Tomb event. With that being said, I think Druid should be the only class that uses this mechanic since the quest changes its hero power. Then you run into the issue of "How many unspent mana crystals count as one mana crystal discount"? It needs to be significant because a Warlock losing 2 HP to draw a card does not feel good to play against if the just didn't spend their last two mana on the previous turn. I miss inspire as a keyword, it's just too hard to balance without the cards being trash.
2: Hearthstone is famous for its simplicity and its speed. It takes, on average for the average non-hyper pro streamer, around ten minutes to play a game of Hearthstone. I've played since Naxx, a ~10 minute game during commutes and downtime feels just as good then as it does now. I'm sure you've red the subreddit and I'm sure you've seen forum posts complaining about "Ropers" just burning the rope every turn. Imagine how horrible it would be for those players to lengthen a game even more if they had an opportunity to extend the game time every time you made a move. Just think on that one. One last thing on this paragraph, the player who goes first does not ALWAYS have the advantage.
I understand that you want more complexity for Hearthstone. I do too, but you have to understand that it simply cannot do that.
I just want my format, Explorer, to be a real thing.
It has monthly bans, it self balances/manages, and it really promotes deck building.
Constant bitching ≠ Actual constructive criticism, especially when the community complains about any deck/class at the top of any meta. If I were in Team 5, I wouldn't listen either.
"People hated toxic and snowball cards & decks" and they'll always exist, if the fact that those types of decks/cards have existed since Naxx doesn't reinforce that, nothing will. Barnes wasn't touched until 26AUG2019, not even a year ago. That should telegraph to all players that Team 5 likes swingy cards/decks that are OP. It doesn't matter how toxic they are to the game, Team 5 will allow it.
Playing cards that didn't start in your hand, deck, opponent's hand, opponent's deck has been normal from day 1, the amount has just increased. Is it fair? Nope. Can I do anything about it? Nope.
Class identity, not something that really exists in Hearthstone unfortunately, especially in Wild. Class identity is fluid since Standard rotation exists, if not all the expansions would feel the same. We had Frost Lich Jaina which depended on an Elemental minion type deck. Now we have (with no current success) no minion Mage, shit changes. We had a Dragon Hunter a few months ago and a few years ago we had a DK Rexxar deck which ran no minions either. So class identity is fluid. Honestly Team 5 should throw the idea out the window.
No one is a master at balance and predictability. Make no mistake that I acknowledge that the power level of Demon Hunter was, and still is, the intention of Team 5. Asking a bunch of people, who work on Hearthstone all day, to go and play it as much as possible to find all the OP strategies and bring them in line in a timely manner is just not feasible. Most of the balance issues are revealed when an expansion goes live, because there's a far greater number of players trying things out. Take Galakrond Shaman for example, Team 5 may have overlooked it because they were worried about work-related stuff and BAM. Fastest nerf in the West.
These cards (and class) will remain "Broken" until either Team 5 gets all the other classes to that level, or they decide to pull back Demon Hunter even further. And people will play 1 health 1 drops, if they have a good deathrattle or something.
Secret Mage, (Old) Quest Mage, Decks with Leeroy Jenkins as a finisher, (Wild) Secret Mage, and Shirvallah, the Tiger Paladin are just a few (off the top of my head) decks that have little or no minion combat. So minion combat is not as fundamental as you think. It's something to consider, but OTK decks don't care.
Oh boy, it sounds like you want to play Hearthstone without all the RNG. If only there was a system in place where players could play with custom rule sets.
Twitch Viewership ≠ Actual Playerbase, it's incredibly disingenuous when this comparison is made for any game. And yeah, it's definitely for the viewership, for some odd reason. IDK I just like playing games instead of watching.
You don't ever want to nerf something to where it is absolutely unplayable. In your first paragraph you acknowledge that the Demon Hunter cards have to be overtuned for the class to be viable, unfortunately this does come with a cost and the same cost will be paid any other time a new class is introduced into Hearthstone. Additionally you have to think about the time and resources put into the new class to get new/returning players to start playing (again) so they can enjoy the game so much so that they invest money into it. On top of that, Hearthstone now has REAL competitors, MTGA being the biggest one in terms of card games. If Demon Hunter came out under performing it would have looked bad on Team 5 and players would just be like "OMG class is so bad, should have spent more time on giving me more free stuff" which wouldn't have peaked interest.
If I remember correctly, Quest Rogue was a problem for months on end. It was stifled by Hadronox druid, but once Spreading Plague was nerfed it creeped back into the meta, if I'm remembering this correctly of course. I could be wrong, I can't remember all too well because I had life events happening around that time.
I've never wanted a deck/card nerfed, I choose instead to either play that deck or find workarounds (but to be honest I mostly play whatever class/deck people are complaining about the most). The only deck that I have been okay with nerfing was Galakrond Shaman. Everyone (Even me) swarmed to it on release week for easy wins to the point to where not enough players were trying to counter to form the meta. That's just the natural order of a game like Hearthstone, and online games in general, people don't like losing. But to answer your question, I think Demon Hunter is in a fair spot right now, Galakrond Rogue (Fuck this deck), Pirate Warrior, Spell Druid, and Tempo Demon Hunter are all competent decks with strengths and weaknesses.
If you go onto the reddit (which is a bad idea due to the hivemind mentality) or the official Blizzard Hearthstone forums (which is just as bad if not a worse idea) you'll see that like every hour there're several posts complaining about Demon Hunter and "Blizz Evil", "Blizz Greedy", "Blizz don't know balance" shit flooding the forums (and players wonder why Team 5 rarely communicates with it's playerbase).
The next expansion will, like every other expansion, have some sort of OP strategy on release day. It will either be countered or nerfed depending on what Team 5 see in their statistics/data. Then the actual decks of the meta will rise after other balance changes and people will complain about them until the next expansion.
But to pretty much answer your entire post, there will always be one or two classes/decks on top no matter what, and you will always feel salty about them. It has to be Demon Hunter this expansion cycle for PR purposes and to "justify" their effort into the class for the lay person. I expect more nerfs coming to Demon Hunter during the next expansion to bring it even more in line if not remove it from the meta entirely for an expansion cycle.
If I'm coming off as an ass I apologize, people can't put someone's personality and mannerisms to text but I'm speaking from an objective point of view.
I don't think it released late, I feel that they pushed it back a bit so players doing feel the pre-announcement slog as long as they have in previous years. I would live if they did an announcement/teaser on the last day of the Felfire Festival.
Historically, it's been in August. The 'Rona will have no affect on the release date.
Seeing posts like this reinforces the reason why Hearthstone needs Tables.
I don’t know how many people would play EDH in Hearthstone, but the option should still exist for players to be at least able to try it
I just read the Reddit and see what class/deck people are complaining about the most and go from there.
Here's the comment guys, let's try to get their attention!
A few weeks ago, Team 5 released a video asking for ideas for formats and modes from the community, asking us what we'd like to see in the game. There is no official way to go about this other than Tweeting them or posting in their official forums. On April the 14th, Team 5 is hosting an AMA to respond to our questions. I'd like for your help to get this to not only get their attention, but to get them to respond to this idea.
This is our opportunity, to not only get this in the face of the developers but to get more people behind this concept. I'll be posting this forum link in the AMA and I'd like for you guys to help by simply upvoting it.
It's mainly to remove their hero power if it's really good. Like say Frost Lich Jaina.
It's weird to see all these cards that literally would have 0 to no affect in Wild. They should probably un-nerf several more cards after the initial un-nerf.
#Unnerfyogg
I'm in favor of un-nerfing it, but it would have to be moved to the Hall of Fame so it doesn't completely shift Standard.
Just sitting here waiting on the new year announcement.
They'll reprint him every year or so, and that's the best way to meet in the middle for F2P's and Blizzard. Print out a new card so resources have to be invested into it.
The technology exists to make this card actually happen and it would be a shame to see it die when Zayle, Shadow Cloak rotates out next year.
As for moving him to the classic set, he may well be the first. They haven't done it yet but he and Zayle definitely belong there.
The collection manager currently needs some kind of overhaul IMO. Like I shouldn't be seeing a regular and golden copy of a card, it'd be nice if they were on the same screen when you clicked the card. Also if you wanted, you could disenchant the "Vanilla" version of the cards once you've earned the full art versions.
The numbers can be played with, I just threw those out there as an example. But I do feel that these should not be easy to obtain, these are free after all.
We need achievements, period. Viewing full art in card form has its' appeal to certain people, if you don't find it interesting that's fine.
It's be nice to earn some sort of reward if you completed card sets as well.