#191 - The Angry Chicken: “Bathtub Design”
1-10-17
• Garrett • Jocelyn • Dills
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Brode’s been chatty
On Nerfing Classic/Basic Cards:
Brode reinforced Team 5’s goals for Standard on the official forums:
...”There are some benefits to keeping Basic and Classic cards in Standard: Returning players have an entry-point to the new format, and new players experience classics like "Hogger" and "Arcane Missiles" that are iconic and great introductions to the game. People take breaks from Hearthstone, and being able to jump right back in with a few cards you already own and understand makes that experience a lot better.
That upside has a real downside in working directly against the big goal for Standard. It needs to feel different each year, and if Basic and Classic cards are still appearing in large densities year after year, we will not be achieving our goals for Standard.
We knew we weren't going to get there when the Year of the Kraken began, so we nerfed 12 basic/classic cards, to put more of the weight of the meta into the rotating sets. We always knew we'd have to watch the meta to see if any future changes would be needed when we got ready for the next year of Standard. If things are looking like they are going to be too same-y for that next year, we could see more nerfs, or we might rotate some additional classic cards to Wild, like we did with Old Murk Eye. No matter what, we're committed to making Standard fresh and exciting each new year.”
When asked if you guys are considering, besides nerfs, implementing buffs for underused vanilla cards?:
Given the goal of Standard is to keep the game fresh each year, it's important to keep a lot of the power of the cards in the expansions, and not in the basic and classic sets. It's not clear what that balance of power should look like (is it ~10 cards from the basic and classic sets on average?), but we're currently skewed so high towards basic and classic cards in decks, that we are at high risk for 'samey-ness' as the years change in Standard. Buffing Basic/Classic cards *increases* that risk. If the goal is to get more cool cards into the meta, just releasing awesome new cards in expansions should make an impact there, and still keep Standard fresh.
Other points Ben made:
Out of some rather idiotic replies came a cool look into changes made for the sake of future releases:
And then when F2P players finally found a way to reach Rank 1 with a cheap OTK Warrior deck, they decide to nerf Charge while saying "omg guiz u have no idea how gud dis iz!!!11".
I see you took the time to look up my exact quote! :) We nerfed Charge (the spell) because we knew the upcoming Grimy Goons mechanic in combination with Enraged Worgen and Charge was not really fair or fun. There have always been F2P players at Legend, and there have continued to be since that change.
On New Player Experience:
Hey there!
We agree that the new player experience needs more work. We've been tweaking it for years and have seen significant increases in retention among new players since launch. Most new players start playing against the AI and then take on other players in Casual. The Casual matchmaker has gone through a lot of iteration and new player winrates have increased by ~15%.
Ranked is a different story. Ranked is becoming more difficult for new players over time. I spoke about some of the challenges we are currently facing with our ladder system before I left for paternity leave here: [See quote below - Ben on Ladder]
Something you may not realize is that new players actually play in a separate matchmaking pool for their first several sessions. In Casual, we match them entirely against other brand new players with similarly-sized collections.
That all said, we think the introductory missions up through Illidan feel pretty good, and after that it still feels like a bit of a cliff. It's definitely something we're aware of. Thanks for your feedback, and for the feedback of everyone else who's been chiming in on this over the last few months.
Links
HCT Winter is in the freaking Bahamas
Links
Developer Insights: Live Stream Q&A
http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/blog/20475279
Ben Brode and Dean “Iksar” Ayala on Thursday, January 13 at 9:00am PST are doing a live Q&A session on Twitch
Topics include: state of the game, the new player experience, the ranked play system, and answering your questions live.
This will lead into our Roundtable Talk.
Strategy Roundtable Talk
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Hopeful HS Improvements
Using the few talking points mentioned in the Dev Insights announcement:
The Return of Control Warrior
https://sectorone.eu/rank-1-legend-decks-mean-streets-gadgetzan-january/#deck4
Crazy Game Stories
You can send your Crazy Game Stories to TACpodcast@gmail.com.
Ricky
Will this be the craziest of stories to come out of Hearthstone? Probably not but in back to back games the RNG God's of Hearthstone shone their bright light upon me and allowed me to "live the dream" in two rather special instances.
Game 1:
I'm playing a Homebrew Reno Deathrattle Shadowform Priest deck and I'm up against a Buff Paladin. I'm going second and coin out Kabal Courier and it finally happened...
Coldarra Drake was an option for me, I didn't even hesitate and I grabbed it immediately. In my hand was already Shadowform and Raza. Not much happens over the next few turns, I casually play Shadowform on turn 3, Raza on 5 and the Drake on 6 and I begin to fire away and take my opponent down from 30 to 0 with 15 lovely free hero powers! Feeling amazing about this I immediately queue into my next game...
Game 2:
This time my Priest deck is going up against a Reno-Lock. We battled for the board for what seemed like an eternity and I know being a Priest, that this matchup is not in my favor. We've both have deployed pretty much all of our arsenal and the Warlock eventually plays Jaraxxus and things are looking real grim...
Until I draw my friend and yours, the Kabal Courier. I swear the courier's internal clock must be off and they think it's Christmas. Much like the previous game, one choice jumped out and it was sacrificial pact! I send that spell at my opponent's face and watch Jaraxxus explode into what seemed like a million pieces!
The two back-to-back wins all due to the Kabal Courier felt so good and if RNG whifs on me for the rest of the year, I will still consider this a successful Hearthstone year just for these two moments.
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Charlie
Hey TAC crew!
Recently I was thinking that Kazakus may be (subjectively) the most FUN Hearthstone card to date. He just feels good to play with or without Brann. Brewing the potions and creating custom spells (within reasonable limits) has added so much to those three classes.
So what are the chances of seeing more cards like Kazakus in the next expansion? There are still six classes that don't benefit from all this happy happy funtime! What would you like to see?
Personally, I was thinking a sort of Legendary Blacksmith for Warrior, Paladin, and Rogue. Similar to Kazakus, you would have a mana option to start the crafting of the weapon. Based on that first choice, you'd have a variety of options moving forward. Thoughts?
Thanks!
Multizord
Dear Frayed, Feathered Fowl:
Illidan is one of the most iconic characters in Warcraft, and despite being the "final boss" of the tutorial, his actual card has only seen fringe play over the life of the whole game. Do you think he's due for a buff or reprint (like Deathwing, Dragonlord)? His power level relative to his importance in the lore is extremely weak--and I find this almost as offensive as I would if Blizzard released an unplayable Arthas card one day.
Keep on clucking!
Cary
Hello resentful poultry!
On one of your previous episodes, you stated that there was a shrinking amount of major lore characters in Warcraft which haven't been explored fully in Hearthstone. However, World of Warcraft has made leaps and bounds in this disgusting new idea known as "content" consistently adding new iconic characters to the story.
The latest expansion, Mean Streets, included 5 characters actually appearing in WoW, Noggenfogger, Madame Goya, Wrathion, Beardo, and Hobart Grapplehammer. With WoW leaping bounds ahead, when do you think Hearthstone will "catch-up", to Warcraft? Some characters, such as Grapplehammer, have very dubious involvement, so to what extent should characters be explored?
I still thinking the list of major WoW characters not represented in Hearthstone is very large. We're still missing
-Arthas
-Many BC characters such as Kael'thas, Akama, Vashj.
-Dwarves: Muradin, Falstad, Moira
-The Titans & Keepers
- Archimonde
- More Wild Gods (Ursoc, etc.)
-Almost all of the Pandaria characters. (Chen, Lei Shen, etc.)
-Almost all of the Draenor characters (Kargath, Maraad)
-Etc...
Understandably, the success of Explorers and Mean Streets show that card expansion stories might be better for Hearthstone than certain raid tiers. Does Hearthstone want to catch up or explore these sections of lore?
On the other side of things, it would be great fun to make Mean Streets "cannon" as a caverns of time raid. This time, the infinite flight would be attacking the future instead of the past. We could have three wings for the three gangs. I can see Don Han'Cho swatting heroes down a Bank elevator with a baseball bat!
Outro
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Personal Stuff
Dill’s where else can everyone find you?
Follow Dills @WillieDills
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The Gamers’ Inn
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NOMOONart.com for Garrett’s stream designs.
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