i would replace the card requeriment to "play this card 1000 times" to obtain a regular full art card and 2000 times to a golden one in order to simplify and allow this format to every card. i'm also curious of how these type of card look like on the board. will they have a square shape?
I think it would be best if they maintain the oval shape that we’re all familiar with. Keeping it simple would be the best way to approach it. That’s why if you were to play these, the opponent would see the “Vanilla” version of the card
Hello everyone, I'm back again with another concept. This one will not be as long as all of my other ones and should make for a quick read. This one is pretty straight forward and again, if there is anything that you'd like to add or are confused about, please don't hesitate to leave a comment.
If you've played physical Magic: The Gathering, then you probably know exactly where I'm going with this. Magic: The Gathering has something that fans like to call "Full art cards". And I thought why not try not to find a way to introduce it into hearthstone?
Please forgive the fact that the cards don't have an Attack or Health indicator, Hearthcards.net can only do so much.
So now we must ask the question, how are these obtainable?
I suggest for free, but not without effort! But before we get into how we obtain these, let me just clear a few things up real quick.
In the collection manager these cards will stand out on their own after their "Vanilla" copies. These are intended to be a long term investment, similar to the 500 and 1000 win portraits. Each Full Art card will have it's own unique or semi-unique requirement in order to obtain it.
These cannot be opened in packs nor can they be crafted or disenchanted, please ignore said buttons pictured.
In order to obtain these cards you must complete the card's requirement As above states, draw 1000 cards with Acolyte of Pain's ability and you will obtain both copies of the full art version. Some requirements SHOULD be harder than others. There will also be Golden versions that require more of the same requirement.
Not every card deserves a full art version, I think doing it for more notable cards would be best. Here's a few examples of some Full Art Cards.
Embiggen: Play 1000 minions affected by this spell. Ysera Unleashed: Draw 1000 Dragons Portals.
Archmage Antonidas: Cast 1000 Fireballs created by this minion. Khadgar: Summon 1000 extra copies of minions with this minion's ability.
Shirvalla, the Tiger: Play this minion for 0 mana 1000 times.
Activate the Obelisk: Win 500 games after you've completed this quest. Northshire Cleric; Draw 500 cards with this minion's ability.
Edwin VanCleef: Play this minion with it's combo activated 1000 times. Pogo-Hopper: Trigger this minion’s battlecry enough to obtain +1000/+1000 in total.
Hagatha the Witch: Play 1000 cards generated from this card's Hero Power.
Armorsmith: Gain 1000 armor from this minion's ability. Clockwork Goblin: Force your opponent to draw 500 bombs from this minion's Battlecry. Dr. Boom, Mad Genius: Use this cards hero power 1000 times.
Hellfire: Deal 1000 damage with this spell. Twisting Nether: Destroy 1000 minions with this spell.
Hakkar, the Soulflayer: Force your opponent to draw 1000 Corrupted Bloods. Genn Greymane: Win 1000 games with this minions ability active. Sylvanas Windrunner: Steal 1000 enemy minions with this minion's Deathrattle.
Some of those numbers seem high and I'm sure some of them are and maybe some of them aren't high enough. The point was to illustrate what kind of requirements cards could have.
This is what it would look like with these cards in game. You've played them enough to know what they do so they will be textless in hand. When on the battlefield, your opponent will see the "Vanilla" version of it to prevent confusion.
That's really it for this post. I'm sure other people have thought of this as well I just wanted to put my interpretation out there. Anyway if you have questions feel free to ask.
Bewitched Guardian - I honestly thought that some type of Hand, Treant Druid would come about. Sadly, it never did.
Vex Crow - I think it only saw a lot of real play right after Witchwood released. Made for a fun deck when cheap spells would get you a full board.
Hidden Wisdom - Probably one of the strongest Paladin secrets in the game, I mean, who doesn't like to draw cards?
I'm throwing Blood Witch and Deathweb Spider together because I was hoping to finally have something I like to call "Painlock". Simply, a Warlock deck that does self damage to boost its spells and minions similar to Lesser Amethyst Spellstone.
Town Crier - Simply because it's a dependable card draw.
Rotten Applebaum - It's a shame to see this card get instantly powercreeped in the very next expansion by Zilliax.
Mossy Horror - What a wonderful tech card, it's a shame to see him go.
The BoomsdayProject
Juicy Psychmelon - It straight up gave Togwaggle Druid the edge in Wild before Aviana was nerfed. Still a wonderful and powerful card.
Crystology - Paladin at it again with powerful card draw, many would argue that it's the best 1-cost spell in the game and I agree.
Eternium Rover - This little guy has been a staple in every Warrior deck since Boomsday. Warrior made a transition during this expansion to be Mech based and this is one of it's many tools.
Dyn-o-matic - Is your enemy playing non-mechs? Need to clear the board AND play a body? This guy has you covered.
Supercollider - A weapon that allowed Warriors to punish other players for bad positioning, absolutely amazing card.
Dr. Boom, Mad Genius - There's really nothing I can say about this card that you don't already know. I hope it gets un-nerfed when he moves to Wild.
Augmented Elekk - Wasn't too much of a threat until Rise of Shadows brought along Bomb Warrior. Sure, Seaforium Bomber came along with Boomsday, but I don't recall Warrior running it that often prior to RoS. For me however, I ran Elekk along with Archbishop Benedictus while both were Standard legal. Good times.
Whizbang the Wonderful - A card that should either be Evergreen, or have a card similar to it released every year.
Zilliax - Team 5 has a weird way of spelling "Auto-include".
Rastakhan's Rumble
Hex Lord Malacrass - I was hoping he'd have some kind of impact, but sadly I was wrong (again). Either way, kind of a fun card.
Spirit of the Frog - Great card draw that played on how you built your deck. It only survives for one turn but it still felt good to draw 2-3 spells while casting other spells.
Rain of Toads - I think it's a fantastic taunt wall for Shaman, that's about it though.
High Priestess Jeklik - Still didn't make Discard Warlock viable, but still fun when right when it came out.
Void Contract - If only it were cheaper. Fun idea, but it's honestly a hard card to balance and it's not worth playing on curve.
Man, Rastakhan's Rumble has a short list.
Anyway, there's the cards that stuck out to me the most.
Was a fantasy nerd, loved Griffins, still do. Played Dungeons and Dragons Online: Stormreach, made an elven mage, and played around wit the word until I came upon Griffior.
Innervate should be rotated with the addition that it should be un-nerfed. It hasn't seen play since the nerf and I just really miss utilizing it to it's full potential.
Wild Growth, again with it being un-nerfed. Breath of Dreams powercreeps it so hard now and Wild Growth just feels dead. Un-nerfing it would fit in Wild Non-Dragon Druid decks.
Divine Spirit AND Inner Fire. We all know the combo, it's just not fun on the receiving end.
Acolyte of Pain or any other neutral draw engine. Acolyte has been used in many, many decks to the point where it's "almost" an auto-include. Azure Drake was one of the first cards moved to the Hall of Fame, and it was because it was an auto-include in many decks, why doesn't Acolyte get treated the same way?
Big Game Hunter once again, with him being un-nerfed. I can't recall the last time this guy was relevant, even with Embiggen druid on the ladder he's still not seeing play. Unless I'm just not paying close enough attention.
To the surprise of absolutely nobody, Leeroy Jenkins should definitely be moved because of the burst damage. Sure it's a fun card to teach new players the appropriate time to play certain cards, but he's frequently been on people's nerves for way too long.
Alexstrasza because that much burst is not fun. If Leeroy is constantly called out for out of nowhere burst damage, Alex should be too.
Malygos hasn't had THAT much of an impact on some metas. But I feel like he limits design space in a way because of the +5 Spell Damage he has. I have a feeling that there were several cards in production and Team 5 said "Wait, Malgos exists, scrap it."
Mountain Giant is the least likely to be moved to the Hall of Fame due to Valdris Felgorge having just been released, but an 8/8 on turn 4 because your opponent has a full hand, of most likely answers to whatever you're about to play, always feels bad. I know Splitting Image Mage has fallen to the way side since Doom in the Tomb, but it still felt horrible to go up against.
A lot of you will probably disagree with me which is fine, but all of above it just opinionated.
This is some seriously good content. I'm really glad this article went up, because I SAW the post a week ago and thought, dang I need to read that when I have time, then I forgot. So, thanks to Shadows for highlighting this.
Now, Griff, you are a Hearthstone player after my own heart(h). Way back in the early days, my IRL friends and I used to do this sort of thing. We'd play suicide Hearthstone and make decks designed to kill your own hero before your opponent can kill theirs. We'd make stupid handicaps like you always have to play the card on the left, or you can't play anything until turn 5. We'd choose a word (like "taunt" or "random") and make a deck using only cards from that search term. The possibilities are endless! But game mechanics made it impossible to adjust things like health total, card count, etc. If Tables were implemented, I'd pretty much just play that. You'd find me there every day, hosting a custom table with some janky-ass rules for other psychos like me. Only weapons can go face! No spells allowed! Orcs vs. Humans!
Please, Team 5, READ THIS!!!
My wife introduced me to MTG when we first started dating. Because of the fact that we didn't have money we'd share our Magic collections and play with our own rules. This is one of the MAIN reasons why I want this mode to be implemented. A mode like this can keep people playing FOREVER, and more importantly, they don't have to pay nearly as much if they don't want to and just use cards they get from their free packs.
The fun thing is with the rules you could totally do: Fatigue = Kill enemy hero, or ban all keywords except "Random" and "Taunt". There's no way there are any technical limitations that stop this mode from being a real thing.
In all reality, just keep putting the word out there and get Team 5's attention.
Every upvote and spread the word of this so someone at blizzard sees it, because this REALLY needs to happen
The only way Blizzard, Team 5, sees this is if people get behind it and spread it EVERYWHERE. Tweet it to them, post it in forums, you name it.
If anything I'd like to have a conversation with them about any of my concepts, because Hearthstone is in a good place currently, but it still has SO much potential.
I think they are great ideas, and I have an idea how to overcome the lack of people for some mode.
Imagine you could see a live counter as to how many people are now live playing each mode and how many are in queue.
Then you could get an idea of the possible wait time and decide if you really want to queue into that.
This is like an improved version of the current estimate you see AFTER you queue.
I think there needs to be more incentives, such as pack tokens and pack sleeves, in the form of a weekly quest. "Play X amount of games in Endless Explorer/Two Headed Ogre/etc. during the week." would encourage players to keep coming back and checking into the mode beyond the daily quest grind. Also a monthly quest would be welcomed as well.
Unfortunately, Blizzard doesn't really report their numbers anymore (not that I can find) and probably for good reason. If people have that kind of information, they can use it to say "X is dead, abandon the game now before it's shut down". On the flip side of that, you can look at Heroes of the Storm which was a very fun game with an even more active community, if those numbers were public when they " killed" the game people would be raiding the forums saying "HotS had X amount of players and Blizzard just abandoned them, Hearthstone/WoW/Diablo/Overwatch is next!".
I think just having a wait time would be fine, but it goes back into that negative feedback loop. "Not many players playing that mode? I guess I'll play a different mode then." That continues until people just randomly start playing it.
I'd really like to have access to those numbers, along with Standard, Wild, Battlegrounds, and Arena's populations as well that way we can truly see what might happen if we split the playerbase further.
If blizzard came to you and said they could only do one of these ideas, but you could pick, what would you pick?
I think “Your Table” and “Play” would be best for the whole Hearthstone community. Allows players with limited collections to go into Formats like Pauper and still be on an even playing field.
Personally I’d really like for my other concept, Explorer, to be implemented since it changes often enough to keep the game feeling fresh.
Have 0 faith in blizzard, specially now that Mike and Peter are out, I doubt they will make anything new, and specially with all the bad decisions and management in the company.
What you are suggesting is a custom mode it's a nice idea but it's blizzard, they are so slow to create new stuff and when they do it's infested with bugs... And don't get optimistic with any rewards...
I don't think Mike and Peter leaving will have much of a negative impact on Hearthstone. These guys were on the team when people were asking for tournament mode and they just didn't deliver on it. Instead they made an Auto-Battler clone in 6 months, hopefully fresh eyes and new people can change the developmental direction for the better.
The rewards are there to show that they can be expanded upon in the game besides the run of the mill still we've been getting. During this who Warcraft 3: Refunded debacle I don't expect much from Blizzard in terms of actual effort, but that doesn't mean the community can't be in Team 5's ear telling them what we want regardless if they listen or not.
I don't agree with your pessimism, but I understand.
I'm a little skeptical on two points, though. Maybe you can explain your thoughts on those some more?
1) "Your table" Match-making / duration of games Say I create my own table. It then ends up in a potentially reeeeeeeeally long list of tables until someone chooses to play with me. Next my opponent has to fully grasp my rules and build a deck which meets those rules. So between creating or even publishing my table and actually starting a game quite some time will pass... like... 5-10 minutes or something? That doesn't sound healthy for the game mode. The bright side is that this shouldn't be a problem for the other modes. But "your table" sure as hell looks veeeeery sexy in concept and might end up being really annoying because of the points I tried to make.
2) New rewards I don't really get the point of the new rewards. A pack token is nothing else than 100 gold which can't be spent for entry fees. And while pack sleeves look like something one could really be excited about (I mean who DOESN'T hate pack rng?), I fear it could tip the scales too far in a pay2win direction (obviously dependend of how they were to be obtained). The point is, you might end up enlarging the gap between f2p-players and p2w-players. Right now, everybody can climb the ladder and get bigger rewards. If you hide those new rewards behind an entry fee, you lower the accessability to the probably best rewards in the game. I don't have an easy solution for this, but maybe we might avoid the problem by just simply sticking to the usual rewards of cards / dust / gold / packs and increasing their volume according to the players achievements. (Side note: that's why european soccer is so boring. The big guys always go to the Champions League and then earn the big money which helps them securing their claims the next season. The only way to avoid this is to outrun the market by flooding the competition with money like the English Premierleague does. I very much prefer the Americans drafting systems and salary caps but don't see how they could be implemented in soccer or HS.)
Thanks for your efforts, this truely great work!
1: This one is going to be difficult and and I'm glad you pointed it out. So the overall point of "Your Table" is to establish your own rule sets, and publish them to the players of Hearthstone. Post the Rule Set code on OutOfCards, Reddit, Hearthpwn, wherever you feel like it would be seen most. If enough people see they may jump into matchmaking with a crafted deck specifically for your rules, however this is also dependent on how much people actually want to play your rule set. If ALOT of players enjoy it, it could be featured for a week or so on the splash page of the game browser granting a high number of player volume within that mode. Then after it's no longer featured, people who have it bookmarked can go back into match making and specifically look for "Your Table".
If I wanted, I could set; Max Health=Unlimited Starting Hand Size=7 Deck Size≥60 Starting Health=20 Common Duplicate Limit=4 Rare Duplicate Limit=3 Epic Duplicate Limit=2 Legendary Duplicate Limit=1 Fatigue Damage=Infinite Card Bans=Reno Jackson, Nozari.
And call it whatever but people know it's MTG. If people want to go back and play this, they most certainly will and they'll probably keep decks specifically for it.
Essentially it's mainly for your friends to fool around with, and maybe create some alternate metas just for funsies. So depending on how fun it is determines the likelihood of queue time. Think the Starcraft II Arcade in a way.
2: The pack token is there so F2P players don't have to worry about dipping into their gold savings when wanting to play Arena or Brawlesium. I've seen where people say they don't touch Arena because of the possibility of drafting a really bad deck because RNG was not on their side and essentially wasting 150 gold. So it's kind of a safety net.
So Pack Sleeves were just something I came up with because like you said, most people hate pack RNG. So I'm about to sound like an ass, but there will always be a huge split between F2P and P2W and there needs to be. The members of Team 5 gotta feed their families, pay there bills, and come up with ways to ensure that they keep their jobs. Creating incentives is a way to get someone who hasn't spent money on Hearthstone, to start. Obviously I spend money on Hearthstone and I sympathize with F2P players, but we also have to be realistic. F2P players can obtain 52 free packs a year from the Tavern Brawl and another 240 packs from saving up gold from completing daily quests, and I don't know how many more free packs from launch and promo events. F2P players are given the short end of the stick, but it's not as short as they think it is. I think the real issue lies in the atrocious Dust economy, but that discussion is for another time and another Thread.
I put the Tokens and Sleeves there because there needs to be more rewards, and they give you control over your rewards which is the most important aspect of them. Imagine going to Dave N' Busters or Chuck E' Cheese, obtaining a large amount of tickets, going to the prize counter, and the attendant just giving you random stuff, that's how ALL of Hearthstone's (FEW) rewards feel like. Giving players an amount of control is big, but also fair, and unfortunately has to come with a cost. I hoard Gold all the way up to an expansion and spend it all on new packs and, to me Dust is useless because I honestly feel like I'm being robbed whenever I craft or disenchant a card.
Anyway, thank you for your input, now I got another thing to think about lol.
This is very interesting but having all of these vastly different ideas and gamemodes in one place is super cluttered, and clutter is something Blizzard is trying to avoid at all costs.
I think it's better if we start 1 at a time, tournament mode would probably be the first one we should go for in my opinion.
Another problem is splitting the playerbase, the game already has issues with wait times in Wild Legend. Adding this many extra gamemodes and ways to split up the game will do nothing but exasperate that problem.
We just got Battlegrounds as well, that's a full gamemode with its own team and updates. It'll probably be a while before they can consider adding a new one.
It's not a perfect UI design, but I work with what I got. It could definitely be improved.
One game mode at a time would work since it gives people enough time to adjust to and understand the rules of each mode.
So I'm aware of the Wild wait times, and I get it. I often ask myself why that is, it could be from the lack of support on Team 5's side letting OP decks/combos exist for so long before balancing them. Or sometimes I think that people just don't like it because of the samey-ness. Once a card is there, it's there forever, it doesn't rotate anywhere. Whatever OP strategy is plaguing the Wild meta will continue to do so until either a balance patch or an even more OP combo comes out after a new expansion. But that paragraph doesn't address your point, it's just how I try to think of it at a different angle, and that's not fair to you.
So splitting the player base is something I'm kind of fine with for the time being, if we had an accurate player count from Blizzard I'd reconsider based on the data. The reason I'm okay with splitting the player base is because people want options, let's use WoW and WoW Classic. Back in Warlords of Draenor players were talking about being able to play in classic servers, Blizzard just refused and didn't take them seriously. At the same time fan projects like Project Nostalrius were beginning to become a popular alternative. With the decline in player numbers (Data is old but still relevant at time of this all happening) for official WoW servers becoming a real thing, and Private Servers starting to really get attention and players (not more than what WoW had but still nothing to sneeze at) it was obvious what Blizzard needed to do. They shut down Project Nostalrius and lo and behold Classic WoW released not long ago. Unfortunately we don't have access to the current numbers (I can't find them) so we don't know how well any Blizzard title is really doing. But we can assume that those players have returned for a little bit longer.
With all that above being said, that's my way of thinking on the matter of splitting/diluting the playerbase. They may not be playing Standard, Wild, Arena, or Battlegrounds, but they are playing Hearthstone.
I think it would be best if they maintain the oval shape that we’re all familiar with. Keeping it simple would be the best way to approach it. That’s why if you were to play these, the opponent would see the “Vanilla” version of the card
Hello everyone, I'm back again with another concept. This one will not be as long as all of my other ones and should make for a quick read.
This one is pretty straight forward and again, if there is anything that you'd like to add or are confused about, please don't hesitate to leave a comment.
If you've played physical Magic: The Gathering, then you probably know exactly where I'm going with this.
Magic: The Gathering has something that fans like to call "Full art cards".
And I thought why not try not to find a way to introduce it into hearthstone?
Please forgive the fact that the cards don't have an Attack or Health indicator, Hearthcards.net can only do so much.
So now we must ask the question, how are these obtainable?
I suggest for free, but not without effort!
But before we get into how we obtain these, let me just clear a few things up real quick.
In the collection manager these cards will stand out on their own after their "Vanilla" copies.
These are intended to be a long term investment, similar to the 500 and 1000 win portraits.
Each Full Art card will have it's own unique or semi-unique requirement in order to obtain it.
These cannot be opened in packs nor can they be crafted or disenchanted, please ignore said buttons pictured.
In order to obtain these cards you must complete the card's requirement
As above states, draw 1000 cards with Acolyte of Pain's ability and you will obtain both copies of the full art version.
Some requirements SHOULD be harder than others.
There will also be Golden versions that require more of the same requirement.
Not every card deserves a full art version, I think doing it for more notable cards would be best.
Here's a few examples of some Full Art Cards.
Embiggen: Play 1000 minions affected by this spell.
Ysera Unleashed: Draw 1000 Dragons Portals.
Archmage Antonidas: Cast 1000 Fireballs created by this minion.
Khadgar: Summon 1000 extra copies of minions with this minion's ability.
Shirvalla, the Tiger: Play this minion for 0 mana 1000 times.
Activate the Obelisk: Win 500 games after you've completed this quest.
Northshire Cleric; Draw 500 cards with this minion's ability.
Edwin VanCleef: Play this minion with it's combo activated 1000 times.
Pogo-Hopper: Trigger this minion’s battlecry enough to obtain +1000/+1000 in total.
Hagatha the Witch: Play 1000 cards generated from this card's Hero Power.
Armorsmith: Gain 1000 armor from this minion's ability.
Clockwork Goblin: Force your opponent to draw 500 bombs from this minion's Battlecry.
Dr. Boom, Mad Genius: Use this cards hero power 1000 times.
Hellfire: Deal 1000 damage with this spell.
Twisting Nether: Destroy 1000 minions with this spell.
Hakkar, the Soulflayer: Force your opponent to draw 1000 Corrupted Bloods.
Genn Greymane: Win 1000 games with this minions ability active.
Sylvanas Windrunner: Steal 1000 enemy minions with this minion's Deathrattle.
Some of those numbers seem high and I'm sure some of them are and maybe some of them aren't high enough.
The point was to illustrate what kind of requirements cards could have.
This is what it would look like with these cards in game.
You've played them enough to know what they do so they will be textless in hand.
When on the battlefield, your opponent will see the "Vanilla" version of it to prevent confusion.
That's really it for this post.
I'm sure other people have thought of this as well I just wanted to put my interpretation out there.
Anyway if you have questions feel free to ask.
Thank you for reading,
-Grif
Don't mind me, just waiting for Team 5 to tell me when they're going to announce Tables.
Under Description, is that where we put the literal card description? Or?
The Witchwood
Bewitched Guardian - I honestly thought that some type of Hand, Treant Druid would come about. Sadly, it never did.
Vex Crow - I think it only saw a lot of real play right after Witchwood released. Made for a fun deck when cheap spells would get you a full board.
Hidden Wisdom - Probably one of the strongest Paladin secrets in the game, I mean, who doesn't like to draw cards?
I'm throwing Blood Witch and Deathweb Spider together because I was hoping to finally have something I like to call "Painlock". Simply, a Warlock deck that does self damage to boost its spells and minions similar to Lesser Amethyst Spellstone.
Town Crier - Simply because it's a dependable card draw.
Witch's Cauldron - Simply because of its flavor.
Rotten Applebaum - It's a shame to see this card get instantly powercreeped in the very next expansion by Zilliax.
Mossy Horror - What a wonderful tech card, it's a shame to see him go.
The Boomsday Project
Juicy Psychmelon - It straight up gave Togwaggle Druid the edge in Wild before Aviana was nerfed. Still a wonderful and powerful card.
Crystology - Paladin at it again with powerful card draw, many would argue that it's the best 1-cost spell in the game and I agree.
Eternium Rover - This little guy has been a staple in every Warrior deck since Boomsday. Warrior made a transition during this expansion to be Mech based and this is one of it's many tools.
Dyn-o-matic - Is your enemy playing non-mechs? Need to clear the board AND play a body? This guy has you covered.
Supercollider - A weapon that allowed Warriors to punish other players for bad positioning, absolutely amazing card.
Dr. Boom, Mad Genius - There's really nothing I can say about this card that you don't already know. I hope it gets un-nerfed when he moves to Wild.
Augmented Elekk - Wasn't too much of a threat until Rise of Shadows brought along Bomb Warrior. Sure, Seaforium Bomber came along with Boomsday, but I don't recall Warrior running it that often prior to RoS. For me however, I ran Elekk along with Archbishop Benedictus while both were Standard legal. Good times.
Whizbang the Wonderful - A card that should either be Evergreen, or have a card similar to it released every year.
Zilliax - Team 5 has a weird way of spelling "Auto-include".
Rastakhan's Rumble
Hex Lord Malacrass - I was hoping he'd have some kind of impact, but sadly I was wrong (again). Either way, kind of a fun card.
Spirit of the Frog - Great card draw that played on how you built your deck. It only survives for one turn but it still felt good to draw 2-3 spells while casting other spells.
Rain of Toads - I think it's a fantastic taunt wall for Shaman, that's about it though.
High Priestess Jeklik - Still didn't make Discard Warlock viable, but still fun when right when it came out.
Void Contract - If only it were cheaper. Fun idea, but it's honestly a hard card to balance and it's not worth playing on curve.
Man, Rastakhan's Rumble has a short list.
Anyway, there's the cards that stuck out to me the most.
Just sitting here, waiting on Yogg-Saron, Hope's End to be reverted.
Was a fantasy nerd, loved Griffins, still do. Played Dungeons and Dragons Online: Stormreach, made an elven mage, and played around wit the word until I came upon Griffior.
This is my hot take on the question.
Innervate should be rotated with the addition that it should be un-nerfed. It hasn't seen play since the nerf and I just really miss utilizing it to it's full potential.
Wild Growth, again with it being un-nerfed. Breath of Dreams powercreeps it so hard now and Wild Growth just feels dead. Un-nerfing it would fit in Wild Non-Dragon Druid decks.
Divine Spirit AND Inner Fire. We all know the combo, it's just not fun on the receiving end.
Acolyte of Pain or any other neutral draw engine. Acolyte has been used in many, many decks to the point where it's "almost" an auto-include. Azure Drake was one of the first cards moved to the Hall of Fame, and it was because it was an auto-include in many decks, why doesn't Acolyte get treated the same way?
Big Game Hunter once again, with him being un-nerfed. I can't recall the last time this guy was relevant, even with Embiggen druid on the ladder he's still not seeing play. Unless I'm just not paying close enough attention.
To the surprise of absolutely nobody, Leeroy Jenkins should definitely be moved because of the burst damage. Sure it's a fun card to teach new players the appropriate time to play certain cards, but he's frequently been on people's nerves for way too long.
Alexstrasza because that much burst is not fun. If Leeroy is constantly called out for out of nowhere burst damage, Alex should be too.
Malygos hasn't had THAT much of an impact on some metas. But I feel like he limits design space in a way because of the +5 Spell Damage he has. I have a feeling that there were several cards in production and Team 5 said "Wait, Malgos exists, scrap it."
Mountain Giant is the least likely to be moved to the Hall of Fame due to Valdris Felgorge having just been released, but an 8/8 on turn 4 because your opponent has a full hand, of most likely answers to whatever you're about to play, always feels bad. I know Splitting Image Mage has fallen to the way side since Doom in the Tomb, but it still felt horrible to go up against.
A lot of you will probably disagree with me which is fine, but all of above it just opinionated.
My wife introduced me to MTG when we first started dating. Because of the fact that we didn't have money we'd share our Magic collections and play with our own rules. This is one of the MAIN reasons why I want this mode to be implemented. A mode like this can keep people playing FOREVER, and more importantly, they don't have to pay nearly as much if they don't want to and just use cards they get from their free packs.
The fun thing is with the rules you could totally do: Fatigue = Kill enemy hero, or ban all keywords except "Random" and "Taunt". There's no way there are any technical limitations that stop this mode from being a real thing.
In all reality, just keep putting the word out there and get Team 5's attention.
The only way Blizzard, Team 5, sees this is if people get behind it and spread it EVERYWHERE. Tweet it to them, post it in forums, you name it.
If anything I'd like to have a conversation with them about any of my concepts, because Hearthstone is in a good place currently, but it still has SO much potential.
Thank you! :)
Oh. My. God.
Thank you for featuring my concept!
I sincerely hope this inspires others to come up with cool ways to expand Hearthstone!
I think there needs to be more incentives, such as pack tokens and pack sleeves, in the form of a weekly quest. "Play X amount of games in Endless Explorer/Two Headed Ogre/etc. during the week." would encourage players to keep coming back and checking into the mode beyond the daily quest grind. Also a monthly quest would be welcomed as well.
Unfortunately, Blizzard doesn't really report their numbers anymore (not that I can find) and probably for good reason. If people have that kind of information, they can use it to say "X is dead, abandon the game now before it's shut down". On the flip side of that, you can look at Heroes of the Storm which was a very fun game with an even more active community, if those numbers were public when they " killed" the game people would be raiding the forums saying "HotS had X amount of players and Blizzard just abandoned them, Hearthstone/WoW/Diablo/Overwatch is next!".
I think just having a wait time would be fine, but it goes back into that negative feedback loop. "Not many players playing that mode? I guess I'll play a different mode then." That continues until people just randomly start playing it.
I'd really like to have access to those numbers, along with Standard, Wild, Battlegrounds, and Arena's populations as well that way we can truly see what might happen if we split the playerbase further.
I think “Your Table” and “Play” would be best for the whole Hearthstone community. Allows players with limited collections to go into Formats like Pauper and still be on an even playing field.
Personally I’d really like for my other concept, Explorer, to be implemented since it changes often enough to keep the game feeling fresh.
I don't think Mike and Peter leaving will have much of a negative impact on Hearthstone. These guys were on the team when people were asking for tournament mode and they just didn't deliver on it. Instead they made an Auto-Battler clone in 6 months, hopefully fresh eyes and new people can change the developmental direction for the better.
The rewards are there to show that they can be expanded upon in the game besides the run of the mill still we've been getting. During this who Warcraft 3: Refunded debacle I don't expect much from Blizzard in terms of actual effort, but that doesn't mean the community can't be in Team 5's ear telling them what we want regardless if they listen or not.
I don't agree with your pessimism, but I understand.
Thank you for reading it!
It took a hot minute to make but I’m glad I finally got it out there
Jade Druid single handedly ruined the Gadgetzan meta IMO.
Deck list please?
1: This one is going to be difficult and and I'm glad you pointed it out. So the overall point of "Your Table" is to establish your own rule sets, and publish them to the players of Hearthstone. Post the Rule Set code on OutOfCards, Reddit, Hearthpwn, wherever you feel like it would be seen most. If enough people see they may jump into matchmaking with a crafted deck specifically for your rules, however this is also dependent on how much people actually want to play your rule set. If ALOT of players enjoy it, it could be featured for a week or so on the splash page of the game browser granting a high number of player volume within that mode. Then after it's no longer featured, people who have it bookmarked can go back into match making and specifically look for "Your Table".
If I wanted, I could set;
Max Health=Unlimited
Starting Hand Size=7
Deck Size≥60
Starting Health=20
Common Duplicate Limit=4
Rare Duplicate Limit=3
Epic Duplicate Limit=2
Legendary Duplicate Limit=1
Fatigue Damage=Infinite
Card Bans=Reno Jackson, Nozari.
And call it whatever but people know it's MTG. If people want to go back and play this, they most certainly will and they'll probably keep decks specifically for it.
Essentially it's mainly for your friends to fool around with, and maybe create some alternate metas just for funsies. So depending on how fun it is determines the likelihood of queue time. Think the Starcraft II Arcade in a way.
2: The pack token is there so F2P players don't have to worry about dipping into their gold savings when wanting to play Arena or Brawlesium. I've seen where people say they don't touch Arena because of the possibility of drafting a really bad deck because RNG was not on their side and essentially wasting 150 gold. So it's kind of a safety net.
So Pack Sleeves were just something I came up with because like you said, most people hate pack RNG. So I'm about to sound like an ass, but there will always be a huge split between F2P and P2W and there needs to be. The members of Team 5 gotta feed their families, pay there bills, and come up with ways to ensure that they keep their jobs. Creating incentives is a way to get someone who hasn't spent money on Hearthstone, to start. Obviously I spend money on Hearthstone and I sympathize with F2P players, but we also have to be realistic. F2P players can obtain 52 free packs a year from the Tavern Brawl and another 240 packs from saving up gold from completing daily quests, and I don't know how many more free packs from launch and promo events. F2P players are given the short end of the stick, but it's not as short as they think it is. I think the real issue lies in the atrocious Dust economy, but that discussion is for another time and another Thread.
I put the Tokens and Sleeves there because there needs to be more rewards, and they give you control over your rewards which is the most important aspect of them. Imagine going to Dave N' Busters or Chuck E' Cheese, obtaining a large amount of tickets, going to the prize counter, and the attendant just giving you random stuff, that's how ALL of Hearthstone's (FEW) rewards feel like. Giving players an amount of control is big, but also fair, and unfortunately has to come with a cost. I hoard Gold all the way up to an expansion and spend it all on new packs and, to me Dust is useless because I honestly feel like I'm being robbed whenever I craft or disenchant a card.
Anyway, thank you for your input, now I got another thing to think about lol.
It's not a perfect UI design, but I work with what I got. It could definitely be improved.
One game mode at a time would work since it gives people enough time to adjust to and understand the rules of each mode.
So I'm aware of the Wild wait times, and I get it. I often ask myself why that is, it could be from the lack of support on Team 5's side letting OP decks/combos exist for so long before balancing them. Or sometimes I think that people just don't like it because of the samey-ness. Once a card is there, it's there forever, it doesn't rotate anywhere. Whatever OP strategy is plaguing the Wild meta will continue to do so until either a balance patch or an even more OP combo comes out after a new expansion. But that paragraph doesn't address your point, it's just how I try to think of it at a different angle, and that's not fair to you.
So splitting the player base is something I'm kind of fine with for the time being, if we had an accurate player count from Blizzard I'd reconsider based on the data. The reason I'm okay with splitting the player base is because people want options, let's use WoW and WoW Classic. Back in Warlords of Draenor players were talking about being able to play in classic servers, Blizzard just refused and didn't take them seriously. At the same time fan projects like Project Nostalrius were beginning to become a popular alternative. With the decline in player numbers (Data is old but still relevant at time of this all happening) for official WoW servers becoming a real thing, and Private Servers starting to really get attention and players (not more than what WoW had but still nothing to sneeze at) it was obvious what Blizzard needed to do. They shut down Project Nostalrius and lo and behold Classic WoW released not long ago. Unfortunately we don't have access to the current numbers (I can't find them) so we don't know how well any Blizzard title is really doing. But we can assume that those players have returned for a little bit longer.
With all that above being said, that's my way of thinking on the matter of splitting/diluting the playerbase. They may not be playing Standard, Wild, Arena, or Battlegrounds, but they are playing Hearthstone.