Blizzard hopes to balance Hearthstone with counters, not nerfs
Blizzard dropped a few choice nerfs in Hearthstone's beta test yesterday, killing several unpleasant decks, but this isn't how it plans to balance the virtual collectible card game in the long term. Ultimately, Blizzard wants to stop single cards or decks becoming dominant by introducing cards which counter them, lead designer Eric Dodds has explained in a blog post detailing Hearthstone's approach to balance.
Blizzard dropped a few choice nerfs in Hearthstone's beta test yesterday, killing several unpleasant decks, but this isn't how it plans to balance the virtual collectible card game in the long term. Ultimately, Blizzard wants to stop single cards or decks becoming dominant by introducing cards which counter them, lead designer Eric Dodds has explained in a blog post detailing Hearthstone's approach to balance.
"Giving you confidence in your cards and the play environment is very important to us, and each card change we make potentially undermines that confidence," Dodds said. "If players find a really great deck, we'll try and slip some fun counters to that deck into the next expansion for you, instead of nerfing those cards directly."
Dodds explains the six main reasons Blizzard may change a card: because it causes "non-interactive games"; is frustrating to play against; causes confusion or isn't intuitive enough; is too strong compared to other cards of that cost; is too weak; or goes with a build or playstyle that's "too strong." He goes into plenty of detail on each point, if you're curious.
Yesterday's patch hit notably unpopular cards including Warsong Commander and Charge, which were part of a "one-turn kill" deck. "We want the game to be about playing minions and fighting for board control rather than just waiting until you can play your big combo and win in one turn with no interaction from your opponent," Blizzard explained.
Hearthstone is currently in closed beta testing, though Blizzard has been pretty generous in doling out invitations. It's launching into open beta real soon you guys, Blizzard swears, you'll see!
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replyAlice O'Connor posted a new article, Blizzard hopes to balance Hearthstone with counters, not nerfs.
Blizzard dropped a few choice nerfs in Hearthstone's beta test yesterday, killing several unpleasant decks, but this isn't how it plans to balance the virtual collectible card game in the long term. Ultimately, Blizzard wants to stop single cards or decks becoming dominant by introducing cards which counter them, lead designer Eric Dodds has explained in a blog post detailing Hearthstone's approach to balance.-
Definitely curious to see how they do it over time. Nerfs should be a last resort.
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Anybody know of codes still floating around for this or did they turn all that off after the latest invite round? Seems to no longer be an option to opt-in for beta consideration via bnet now, too.
I got in, but my brother wants to get in BAD. Trying to find some kind of way. Doesn't look promising though.-
Anybody that opted in before December 16th should have a beta key now. Check your spam folder. If you didn't get in before the 16th there are still some places doing key give aways. I would suggest The Angry Chicken podcast. http://amove.tv/tac/
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Ultimately, I'd like to not cut all the corners I cut in my job. One way I do this is writing blog posts about how I plan on doing my job. All this is more fun than my actual job, so I'll keep cutting corners there to have more time for blog posts, video games and sexy ladies.
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"We want the game to be about playing minions and fighting for board control rather than just waiting until you can play your big combo and win in one turn with no interaction from your opponent,"
... but we totally will nerf warlock rush decks which are about playing minions and fighting for board control-
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Please don't act like Murloc decks weren't broken with Blood Imp.
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Plenty of ways of dealing with the murloc issue specifically instead of eliminating an entire playstyle, but w/e. Maybe you should work at Blizzard since you seem to know everything about the game: http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/careers/directory.html#region=Americas
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Just applied for Game Tester Intern and Chief Technology Officer, thanks for the link.
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I changed my mind on the Blood Imp change. It might screw up aggro but it makes Warlock midrange and control pretty good now. A Blood Imp can't attack out of stealth now (I actually still hate this) but it is buffing another minion on every turn now. That gets out of control very fast unless the enemy has untargeted removal. I think it'll open up for demon decks and things like that.
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Yeah, if you have less creatures out they are getting more than the +1 hp and the hp sticks around if the imp gets killed. It works slower obviously but it has it's benefits. I'm still keeping the imps in all decks that would have had them previously.
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Counter cards seem like such a dumb idea.
You get all of 30 total cards to pick from for any particular deck and being forced to counter the current dominant deck via a specific card is just a waste.
First, you need the card in your hand, second the other guy has to be running a deck that can be countered.
And if you make a laser targeted counter, it's completely useless in every other situation and works as a hindrance.
Nerfs are totally appropriate here.-
its a bad idea in general, doesn't matter the size of the deck. littering the field with a situational card to counter another situational card is silly and isn't optimal. even if you know the type of deck the other player is going to use, those cards are useless unless you already have them in your deck (which is a gamble) and able to pull them when you need it (which is highly unlikely.
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Magic handles this by making matches a best of 3 affair. Then between matches you have a 15 card sideboard you can use to swap out cards 1:1 from your main deck. This allows you to have silver bullets for bad matchups. And because the draft format (ie arena) has you draft more cards than you can play you also get to do this in the limited formats and not just constructed.
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But if I wanted to play magic I would go play magic.
Also I don't think "counters" as they are being proposed by blizzard are going to be "silver bullets" that are so incredibly narrow that you only have a single use for them (ie. card with text that reads "Kill Lord Jaraxxus" or "You are immune to frost")-
He's giving you an example of how another game deals with this same problem.
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You effectively already are playing a simplified version of Magic, which not surprisingly then has similar balance issues that Magic deals with. At the moment Hearthstone has a much more limited suite of options to handle those imbalances because of various mechanics (or lack thereof). Their current solution is a constant game of whack a mole nerfs which seems like the worst possible option to me.
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It's so similar a Magic player needs like a 90 second explanation before playing. It has all the same balance issues Magic has, full stop. Magic dealt with these problems decades ago and did things like inventing sideboarding and evolving card design to provide a mix of versatile options and outright silver bullets. They don't get to just nerf stuff when they mess up and then watch what new thing now needs nerfing.
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and bans in Magic are quite rare. In Standard (the primary format) they banned 2 cards in 2011 and before that the last bans were 2005. They've had to do more bans in newer formats like Modern and ones with much larger card pools. Even Standard has a significantly larger card pool than Hearthstone at the moment.
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No kidding? A person already familiar with typical CCG mechanics only needs a 90 second explanation before playing? Next you'll bell telling me that a UT player would only need a 90 second explanation before playing quake, which would mean by your logic that quake is a simplified version of UT.
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I honestly don't know which of your posts are ever worth responding to because the assertion that Hearthstone is a simplified version of Magic (and therefore susceptible to the same balance issues) is so uncontroversial there's nothing to argue about. There are numerous other card games which are not so overtly Magic with a different skin and fewer mechanics.
And yes UT is susceptible to all the same problems that Quake is as far as balance goes due to their similarities.
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Eh. The games are different enough from one another even though Hearthstone is much easier to pick up. There is a much different emphasis on card advantage, board advantage, and overextending, which is partly the product of mana being a predictable resource (one that's more malleable with Druid and Shaman) and not getting mana blocked/screwed.
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I don't really see it. All the first concepts you describe are basically the most critical things in Magic as well, while modern Magic offers almost no ability to mess with the opponent's mana, it's just a matter of how greedy they are in deck construction whether they get screwed frequently. Magic has only gotten more about board advantage over the years as Wizards wants to eschew non-interactive strategies.
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Reliability of resources is huge, meaning you can always play a well balanced deck, meaning that there need to be very reliable counters. Another thing is that nearly all targets can be selected, which again puts much greater emphasis on baiting out counters and threats you know are there so that you can eventually play your win condition.
I play both and I feel the pressure of tempo a bit more in Hearthstone, simply because things are much more reliable for both players.-
meaning that there need to be very reliable counters.
this is exactly what sideboarding is perfect for. It lets your cardpool include things that are ridiculously good at one highly specific thing and outright useless the majority of the time and players have a way to use them. Otherwise you're just left with everything trying to be generally good and versatile all the time lest your deck be filled with dead cards in certain matchups.
which again puts much greater emphasis on baiting out counters and threats you know are there so that you can eventually play your win condition.
again I just don't buy it. Yeah Hearthstone has more "removal" in the average deck but this really doesn't change these concepts. It's equally critical in Magic to sequence your plays correctly and not just run your key cards out into removal. Likewise the opponent isn't going to just play their best removal on the first thing that hits play knowing what you're trying to do. If anything there's more to worry about since beyond removal you have to worry about other more varied tricks and instant speed effects mid combat and during the opponent's turn.
I could buy that the average game is more focused on a particular thing like tempo than the average Magic game since Hearthstone doesn't have as many ways to interact but I don't think that makes them significantly different. In Hearthstone you're just more often playing the creature based, tempo heavy matchup while Magic (especially in eternal formats) is going to have other types of games more often.-
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the mixture of matchups between archetypes and how exactly those archetypes play out in each game is mildly different but on the whole the games are so mechanically similar that all of the fundamental theories of winning play are the same. You keep talking about card advantage, board advantage and tempo as being more critical in Hearthstone but those are literally the most critical concepts in Magic. Hearthstone has greater uniformity and fewer mechanics so the average match may hinge on one of those concepts more than the average Magic match but I certainly wouldn't say they're more important concepts than in Magic. The reason it's so easy for a good Magic player to transition to Hearthstone isn't because it just uses what is essentially the same control scheme (mana/creatures/etc) but because it hinges on all the same concepts and theory.
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Which is why I used the word "emphasis". The concepts are there but different things are in the forefront and the background between the two. I'll say it again: reliability of resources is a huge thing that really changes balance, emphasis, and speed between the two games.
They are superficially similar but they play differently enough to be their own thing. As I said last month, I know very high level Magic players who enjoy Hearthstone for the specifically "Hearthstony" aspects of the game.
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This was how I saw it, it's like a way dumbed down version.
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That's a pretty poor solution that only works in the tournament setting though.
You can metagame the hell out of that by just spectating opponent's matches before hand.
In random matches, you can only go with the current metagame of 'well deck A is popular and I need to handle X' and tossing that card into the mix despite how little it contributes to every other situation.-
It works in every setting, you always play a best of 3. Obviously you can choose not to but it's just an integral part of the game.
I don't know what you think spectating an opponent's match beforehand will do, if that's even possible. You can't sideboard before the match, and your sideboard is set at the start of the event, the same as your deck. Further, it's not like Magic is filled with 1000 rogue decks. There's an established metagame and you know which kinds of decks yours is soft to (either specific implementations or a more general archetype). Your sideboard reflects that.
I'm not seeing what better alternative you're proposing.
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also as far as being a poor solution here's actual depth it adds to the game:
-it adds a significant amount of strategy to deckbuilding since there's now a huge pool of cards that are otherwise unplayable in general but now can be applied to specific matchups.
-it adds a significant amount of strategy to preparation since now when practicing against various decks you need to learn what your optimal sideboarding plan is against each deck.
-it adds a significant amount of strategy to gameplay since now even though you're playing games 2 and 3 against the same opponent/deck there're still unknowns you have to prepare for. You make your sideboarding choices while also having to anticipate an opponent's. So now you'll see something like a creature light control deck sideboard in creatures because they anticipate the opponent siding out most of their removal that was useless in game 1. In limited (ie arean) especially you sometimes even can have a full on transformational sideboard and change your deck massively if it happens to be better for that matchup (as your sideboard there is all the cards you drafted but aren't playing). -
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Magic wanted to be fast to play as well. The original pitch for the game was exactly that. But if you want a balanced tournament format you have to do something. You're certainly not required to play every match of Magic as a best of 3 if you don't want to (MTGO lets you choose in casual games), but it's proven extremely effective at both ensuring the better man wins by flattening variance (even more important in Magic with the resource system) and ensuring the game is well balanced and full of nuanced strategy at deck building and gameplay time. It even plays well with limited formats and budget players by offering cheap silver bullets that they can't maindeck but allow them some outs against someone with superior card quality.
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And Hearthstone tournaments have all been BO3. That's an expected difference between an organized setting and an online game like Hearthstone, Starcraft, or DOTA.
I think a tournament setting built into the game would be fantastic, don't get me wrong, but right now its following a typical online ladder structure.-
I guess I'm not sure what people are arguing for at this point. I see a bunch of people saying they don't want the established approaches to CCG balancing and instead want...? I guess maybe it's not a surprise that videogame players think nerfs are a good approach since they're accustomed to it but it generally feels bad to me. Essentially being punished for successfully developing a strategy is not a balance model I'd be striving for.
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right, I'm surprised no one seems to be offering a single alternative they prefer to nerfs or the other proposals.
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Addition of cards is inevitable. I think that'll fix whatever class/balance issues arise, on top of adding other kinds of plays.
People are figuring stuff out all the time. Mill decks (which technically weren't supposed to be a thing) have actually been figured out for Druid and Rogue. I hope they keep adding different kinds of combos. People hated Warrior OTK, but I love that multiple OTK combos were figured out before Blizz changed some key cards. Counters and lateral buffs are more fun than nerfs.
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also there are ways to make a card good in general but even better against specific strategies. For example in Magic there's a 4/4 creature for 3 mana. This is a card that's "above the curve" already (you'd generally expect 3 mana to only get you a 3/3). It has an additional ability that says if it would be discarded from your hand you may put it into play instead. This ability is basically irrelevant in most matches. But if a few specific cards with discard abilities end up dominating then the value of this card goes up. Sure enough a year ago it was pretty useful because such a discard card was dominating. Now that card is gone and this 4/4 is rarely used. But that could change again in the future.
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srsly
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Seems like a bad idea.
1) Lots of lag time between the new OP thing being discovered and the new counter being designed, balanced, developed, released, and acquired by players.
2) Power creep. If you're not going to nerf overpowered things, then you need the thing that beats it to be pretty powerful. Rinse repeat. If you leave the game for a while your decks are going to be pretty awful when you get back. Magic works like this too, but that doesn't mean it's a good thing.-
1) Magic solves this by developing far ahead of time. They've been testing the current cards for like a year, and designing the next set for a year+ before it actually gets into our hands. I mean, isn't a nerf suffering from the same problem? Either they properly test the cards and the nerf and buff something else appropriately or they're just being reactionary and trying to quickly quell a particular strategy. The result is a new OP thing that now needs a nerf because it was previously held in check by the first thing that was nerfed.
2) this really is avoidable. Magic actually hasn't had that much power creep in aggregate. It's taken them decades to slowly get creature power levels closer to spells. Still the formats that allow any card throughout history are dominated primarily by non-creature cards whose power levels will always be unparalleled. One thing it does require is expanding the game mechanically over time to give yourself space to do new things that are different and powerful but not strictly better than the old. That said, it's entirely possible Blizzard approaches this more like a videogame and does just have expansions be more powerful (nerfs are also a consequence of the videogame culture)
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I'm already hitting the paywall for the game. Everyone I play in in ranked matches (level 21 or 20) are throwing purples and golds at me now. I guess I have to pay up to have a chance now. Nobody mentioned the game was Pay to Win. :(
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It's a CCG what'd you expect?
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It's a F2P video game what'd you expect?
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