Hearthstone

[Azoth]

I was thinking about whats the latest card changes Blizzard has made.

I've been thinking about this, too. I was going to write a post about it, but Ben Brode, lead game designer at Hearthstone, beat me to the punch. He speaks from about 3:00 to 16:15 in that video, and argues that Blizzard rarely makes card changes because:

1. Changing existing cards is not significantly easier than adding new cards; both require the same amount of testing. All else being equal, you'd rather see a new card than change an existing one, so constant card changes are not a good use of the development team's time.
   
2. Card stability lets casual players return to the game more easily and build towards a particular deck over time. The constant churn of card changes would leave them struggling to keep up.
   
3. Some veteran players also enjoy periods of card stability between expansions, when they can focus on fine-tuning existing decks, swapping out a card or two until their list is perfect.
   
4. For those players who prefer the "spice" of constant change, the new Tavern Brawl mode will introduce a new deckbuilding variant every week.
   
5. In general, it's not possible or desirable to eliminate bad cards. Cards are judged relative to each other, so some will always be unplayable. And some cards aren't meant to be powerful: they're meant to teach basic concepts to new players, or inspire wacky variants, or create memorable moments.
   

I think he makes some pretty good points. One thing Brode doesn't mention is that buffing existing cards reduces the design space for future cards. Given that you want to keep power creep at a manageable level, and don't want to introduce too many new mechanics in a given expansion, the design space for a given mana cost is somewhat limited. With Dalaran Mage (1/4 +1 spell power) as your 3-cost baseline, you can make a case for Soot Spewer (3/3 +1 spell power Mech, Mage-only). With a 2/4 Dalaran Mage, you force Soot Spewer higher, fueling power creep, or make it redundant.

So while I'd personally prefer to see more card changes (I've been stockpiling extra copies of cards for the dust), I think Blizzard's policy is sound.

[Cheater Hater]

One of the interesting things is that Blizzard hasn't made any cards that are strictly better/strictly worse than others yet--the only one I can think of is the 1/4 Taunt -> 1/4 Charge Taunt, but the weaker one is a beast, so you have that synergy as well.

A lot of this comes down to the lack of rotation in Arena--as long as every card is in Arena, there isn't a reason to make strictly better/worse cards. In addition, when you're directly selling cards (the Adventures), that limits your options in that regard (since everything is fixed rarity in terms of availability).

In addition, this problem will likely come up sooner simply due to the relative lack of creature keywords--you have your obvious things like Taunt, Charge, and "Shroud" (can't be targeted by spells/hero powers), but you don't have equivalents to mainstays like Flying, First Strike, or Trample, giving you fewer knobs to tweak.

[SevenSpirits]

I would love it if they put out a balance patch tweaking cards once every month. One of Ben's arguments was that they have to test changes over hundreds of games, but I disagree. They have smart people immersed in the metagame, and they have a lot of data. They can afford to make small tweaks blind and push them out into the wild for testing.

I can understand why Ben and the rest of the team want to make fewer changes and leave the environment more stable for longer. He put out a lot of good arguments that I agree with. It's just that as someone who loves the exploration phase, I personally would enjoy it if they made tweaks more frequently and I don't mind if they don't test them as extensively.

[SevenSpirits]

I think he makes some pretty good points. One thing Brode doesn't mention is that buffing existing cards reduces the design space for future cards. Given that you want to keep power creep at a manageable level, and don't want to introduce too many new mechanics in a given expansion, the design space for a given mana cost is somewhat limited. With Dalaran Mage (1/4 +1 spell power) as your 3-cost baseline, you can make a case for Soot Spewer (3/3 +1 spell power Mech, Mage-only). With a 2/4 Dalaran Mage, you force Soot Spewer higher, fueling power creep, or make it redundant.

So while I'd personally prefer to see more card changes (I've been stockpiling extra copies of cards for the dust), I think Blizzard's policy is sound.

That's funny, because that's actually the same card I had in mind to make the opposite argument. My argument is that because Dalaran Mage exists (alongside several other terrible spell damage minions), they can't print appropriately powerful new spell damage guys because they're not willing to make ones that are strictly better than these terrible cards. Soot Spewer is an example. Soot Spewer isn't playable! And yet it still looks Dalaran Mage look bad. Perhaps the reason that Soot Spewer wasn't printed at a higher power level (so that it's playable) is that the other spell damage guys are providing such a bad baseline.

One of the interesting things is that Blizzard hasn't made any cards that are strictly better/strictly worse than others yet--the only one I can think of is the 1/4 Taunt -> 1/4 Charge Taunt, but the weaker one is a beast, so you have that synergy as well.

Well you know, there's the oft-cited Dr. Boom / War Golem comparison. You can make arguments that it's not strictly better (Nerubar Weblord, Cabal Shadow Priest...) but these arguments are so esoteric that if you accept them it's pretty much a tautology that no card is strictly better than another card.

[Dantski]

I would love it if they put out a balance patch tweaking cards once every month. One of Ben's arguments was that they have to test changes over hundreds of games, but I disagree. They have smart people immersed in the metagame, and they have a lot of data. They can afford to make small tweaks blind and push them out into the wild for testing.

I can understand why Ben and the rest of the team want to make fewer changes and leave the environment more stable for longer. He put out a lot of good arguments that I agree with. It's just that as someone who loves the exploration phase, I personally would enjoy it if they made tweaks more frequently and I don't mind if they don't test them as extensively.

This mostly sums up my view on how often changes should be made. The most exciting time to play Hearthstone for a lot of people is after things have changed and that's most obvious when a bunch of new cards are released. When there's a stable environment, the casual players get bored because the only variety they get is what they create themselves by playing offbeat decks and using weaker cards.

Blizzard just seems to have the attitude of "Hearthstone is popular so lets not risk changing things". They took a long time to change Undertaker when it was clear to everyone that it needed to be. You could say the same for Dr Boom. Quite a lot of the unplayed cards (and rarely picked in arena) can be improved without making them too strong but Blizzard is too cautious of disrupting the balance and maybe simply unwilling to invest some time into making the old cards playable.

You both mentioned the Dalaran Mage vs Soot Spewer example. That disparity is made worse by the Spewer also having Mech synergy which makes it weak but still playable in a Mech deck. The 3/3 stats plus being a mech makes it a superior choice in arena as well so how hard is it to see that a change should be made? A very similar situation is with Silverback Patriarch vs Ironfur Grizzly, neither is played or considered strong but unless its your 29th pick in arena and you've somehow drafted this amazing Hobgoblin deck you won't pick Patriarch over the Grizzly. A 1/4 statline for 3 mana is blatantly underpowered, Unbound Elemental is a 2/4 with superior card text yet isn't considered too strong, Dark Cultist is a 3/4 with a useful Deathrattle. Put simply a taunt creature shouldn't have as good stats as the best cards at that mana cost but it should be competitive (see Shieldmaster or Unstable Ghoul or even Fen Creeper).

Blizzard already released all those Mech cards that can stand up for themselves without Mech synergy so why can't cards with other synergies or without any synergy get the same treatment? It just reinforces the idea that Blizzard makes newer cards stronger in order to get people to buy the expansions. I don't mind them making new cards strong but I don't like them abandoning old cards when they do have the resources to keep them inline with newer cards.

[Cheater Hater]

No, you don't want to shake up the metagame every month, because they you confuse your playerbase--this is especially bad in Hearthstone since it's trying to get a more-casual audience (compared to MTG/Yu-Gi-Oh). I remember watching Yu-Gi-Oh swap which wrath variant was allowed every three months for a couple ban list cycles, including Mirror Force being taken on/off nearly every modification.

Soot Spewer should be more powerful than Dalaran Mage since it's a Mage-specific card, just like how a red burn spell can be more powerful than a colorless one. There isn't nearly enough variation in the basic effects of each class; I think almost every class has a burn spell that's 2 mana for ~3 damage at this point for instance.

Oh right, I forgot War Golem -> Dr. Boom, but that's a special case since it would be much more powerful as a 6/6 than a 7/7 because of BGH.

Yes, you could improve a lot of cards easily, but they were made that way for a reason: not every card can be an equal power level. Even if you don't agree with the idea that bad cards/skilltesters (obviously bad cards like Wisp/the 0/4 Taunt) or underpowered vanilla cards (like the aforementioned War Golem), it's a proven formula.

They made all the mech cards strong because they needed to sell the new set. It's obviously a small amount of power creep, and Blizzard will hopefully get better with time (and not fall into the endless power creep trap like so many other CCGs), but they'd need to actually release new sets first

[Dantski]

No, you don't want to shake up the metagame every month, because they you confuse your playerbase

Because the majority of the playerbase can't think for itself and is only capable of copying decks off a website?

Hearthstone is being played as an esport so it shouldn't cater to people who play a few times a week over their core players who login every day. Casual players add fairly meaningless numbers for the marketing team to brag about when they say our game has X million players, they have no impact on how the game is played for the most part and aren't tremendously important.

p.s. On an unrelated note I managed to play Tinkmaster 10 times in a single game today, all 10 were squirrels!

[SevenSpirits]

Oh right, I forgot War Golem -> Dr. Boom, but that's a special case since it would be much more powerful as a 6/6 than a 7/7 because of BGH.

How is that a special case? Both War Golem and Dr. Boom are 7/7s. The only difference is one has a beneficial battlecry.

[Cheater Hater]

No, you don't want to shake up the metagame every month, because they you confuse your playerbase

Hearthstone is being played as an esport so it shouldn't cater to people who play a few times a week over their core players who login every day. Casual players add fairly meaningless numbers for the marketing team to brag about when they say our game has X million players, they have no impact on how the game is played for the most part and aren't tremendously important.

100% wrong! If you don't have casual players you don't have a game! Go look up the VS System TCG and how it had insanely good prize payouts, was extremely skillful...and died because no one but the top tier players would play it!

On Dr. Boom: I'm just saying that if Dr. Boom had been a 6/6 (to avoid being strictly better than War Golem), it would have been way too strong. Of course, this isn't the entire story (since they could have easily made it 7/5 or something), but it's meaningful when it's one of your only data points.

[SevenSpirits]

Huh? There are a lot of other ways to make a card worse than giving it -1/-1.* That's a complete non sequitur to pointing out that there is, in fact, a card that is strictly better than another card.

*That's an especially weird example to give since you don't even believe that would make it worse.