Dean "Iksar" Ayala has commented on internal playtesting for Battlegrounds that is evaluating if changes are needed to the damage seen in the game.
Here's what Dean says they are looking to internally playtest soon and have already looked at with "mixed feedback".
- Incoming Playtest: Instead of damage scaling by the card's Tavern Tier, their damage would be set to 1 for all tiers.
- Playtested: Variable health scaling for heroes that are lower-powered.
Being on the receiving end of some particularly bad RNG in Battlegrounds in the past, I can safely say I'd love to see how games would feel if minions were only doing 1 damage apiece. It would definitely remove some of the feel-good value later on in the game when you can establish a couple of 6-star units since you wouldn't be hitting people very hard, but it might be a worthy sacrifice if everyone can feel better about the game; It may also lead to some different strategies which is an interesting thought.
What do you think of the above potential changes? That isn't to say both are going to arrive together or at all, but how do you feel about the situation where you get smacked in the face mid-game for the majority of your health? Do you think Battlegrounds needs some changes? Let us know in the comments below!
Quote From Dean Ayala Slightly off topic, but can I ask your thoughts about the damage levels in the game currently? Being hit for 22 damage mid-game as the third strongest in the lobby because you matched up with someone who power spiked is awful - hell being hit for a quarter of your health by someone who had crowd favourite & another 3 drop survive on 1hp on tavern 4 is awful.
I know battlegrounds is intended to be faster paced than most auto-battlers, but have there been experiements with changes such as all minions do 1 less damage to see how it plays out? I think a lot of the fun is scaling into a late game build and how you transition that, rather than just trying to hold on for dear life through turns 7-10, praying you don't come against the two snowballing guys, and hoping you can hit something in the meantime.
We are planning to playtest soon with hero level + 1 damage per card with some hero health adjustment to see how it feels. Unrelated, we have also been playtesting with a variable health system that boosts lower powered heroes by a small range of health. You might have to choose between a 47 health galakrond or a 40 health rafaam and maybe that is interesting. It’s gotten mixed feedback so far.
Comments
I think a good compromise is that your minions can only deal damage as high as your tavern tier, so if you're tier 3 and you shifter (or galakrond) into a t6 minion it still benefits you in the long run but not so much as doing stupid amounts of excess damage. A particularly egregious game I encountered was when I was facing AFK on turn 4. She picked shifter and it turned into imp mother. Imp mother then proceeded to spawn 2 malganis and the 3/9 void taunt minion. (I attacked with my first minion, imp mother hit my unstable ghoul and procced, then procced on ghouls death rattle. Took 23 damage on turn 4 as Eudora. Never had a chance to recover. But with that being said I never really considered the tavern tier on minions to be that bad outside of a handful of egregious offenses, and feel like extending the game by even 3 turns will make most builds obsolete. Even divine shield murlocs with poisonous would pale in comparison with a macaw/swiper/goldrin build if it got to the point where the swipers were able to kill 3 at a time, or if a dragon build has enough time to triple a kalecgos and double up on nadinas.
Restore 5 health with every tavern upgrade.
People wouldn't die too quickly and the game would be more fun for everybody
I'd love the chance to play a version of BGs where each minion deals 1 (and tokens deal 0). I hope they don't just throw it into the abyss if the internal feedback is too conflicted to implement it in the live game. A test server would be useful in this particular situation.
You scared me for a second there. I thought it was a change for HS health mechanic. I keep forgetting theres a new game inside HS
I really like the idea of all minions only doing 1 damage, although something else (like lowering total hero health) would probably have to done to compensate. Regardless of what they will do, at least something has to be done so you aren't able to just randomly take absurd amounts damage because you happened to go against a guy who just powerspiked, or because a bunch of your opponent's high tier minions happened to survive with a sliver of health.
Lowering hero health nerfs demons.
Generally while taking an absolute chonking off of two minions staying alive is pretty BS and could use toning down, I'd say the game has bigger problems. Namely the massive discrepancies between hero power levels and the constant power creep in that regard. I'd say it doesn't matter that much how much damage you're taking off a guaranteed loss because your opponent is Lich King, but rather that there is such a thing as guaranteed loss because your opponent is Lich King. Many heroes with lategame hero powers or slowly scaling hero powers arrive at the stage of the game where they actually get to make decisions and find that they've lost 7 games in a row so far and not one of them was winnable because the opposing hero was inherently better. The benefits that hero powers provide should be nowhere near as impactful on the outcome of the game as it is right now. Ysera getting guaranteed Dragons in her tavern to incentivise a Dragon build is fine because you still have to put in the effort to make that build work. Maiev getting guaranteed ridiculous gold and board advantage for 1 gold investment per turn takes no effort and yet is somehow way more impactful. Heroes that are harder to play should be better as a reward, easier heroes should be weaker, not the other way around.
As for the damage issue, the game could definitely do with some slowing down, but if you take that too far (and by too far I mean extending the game by upwards of 3 turns), you'll find that certain tribes just have no place in the game. What are you going to do with Mechs, Demons or Pirates in a 17 turn game? What reason is there to even go for those strategies if the end-game is going to revolve around Divine Shielded Dragons, Amalgadon Menageries. Amalgadon Poisonous Murlocs with Selfless Heroes, and Goldrinn Beasts? Demons, Pirates and Mechs thrive on being powerful early to kill people off and secure you a good position to place before you inevitably lose to one of the more powerful lategame builds. If you cut that route to success off then the game becomes a lot more samey because the powerful lategame builds will have the time they need to scale. It's like if you increased the starting health in normal Hearthstone to 50. It's just an accross-the-board nerf to all aggressive strategies, and now combo and control are the only ways to play.
TLDR: Tune down the damage, sure, but either be careful not to go too far, or bring more strategies up to an equal late-game power level.
EDIT: Since I've spilled so much digital ink already, might as well come with my own suggestion: cutting damage from minions to 1 per is ridiculous and I can't believe they're even considering it. It's obviously way too much. I'd say keep the current damage formula, but either remove tavern tier from the equation, or keep tavern tier and minion tier in, but then cut the resulting number in half, rounding up.
Seems like this would dramatically increase the total match length if they didn't also lower starting health across the board. But I think it's definitely worth testing.
I like the idea of changing the hero's starting health. That would allow for more precision in balancing.
If they want to make the minions do 1 damage each, they should also make token minions do no damage at all. Otherwise a token build would often be doing way more damage than a normal build. Perhaps normal minions could do 2 damage and tokens 1 damage?
The Health changes are interesting, but they should totally remake patchwreck or make him better if that is the case