I think this is a very high quality thread. I think Hearthstone could benefit from having variance particularly in the start of the game reduced by a little bit. Examples of this:
* Players start with one or two more cards each.
* Players start the game with a little bit more life, like 35 (To reduce the chance of noninteractive early game steamroll matches).
However I am a huge fan of the emergent complexity and gameplay that arises from mechanics that include a degree of randomness. This is why discover is my favourite mechanic.
Edit: Maybe also relevant to the discussion: I play wild exclusively.
Getting steamrolled due to bad draws certainly sucks, although I expect increasing the opening hand size will have some complications beyond just improving early draws. I'm not entirely sure whether it would favour aggro or control, since aggro has more fuel while control has better odds of having answers. I guess it's a good sign that it is not obvious who benefits most.
I would be most wary of both suggestions for combo decks. Having 1 extra card at the start reduces the clock for decks to beat them in by 1 turn, which is occasionally a huge deal. Meanwhile, having a higher health total will make combo decks who don't already have 35 damage reach fall off the face of the game completely. Ultimately, I think cards for combo decks are balanced so much around the size of the starting hand, the starting health total and the maximum 10 mana crystals that changing any of them might cause balance problems even if all other archetypes are fine with it.
Since I actively avoided touching on the variance in card draw in my initial post, I haven't given full thought to whether early game variance could be optimised. It's certainly an interesting topic of discussion, especially with regards to how the game has evolved since the simpler days of Classic.
This brings me to another flaw with the game, as I see it: The lack of options for interacting with your opponent's game plan. I can see why one would be wary of introducing cards like these: losing key cards due to discard mechanics or similar is not fun, and one could certainly make a case that too much meddling with your opponents' resources could in itself result in a non-interactive game environment. For instance: There are decks in MTG whose plan is to discard their opponent's entire hand and thus leave them with no ways to interact. That has the potential to be oppressive in and of itself.
I think the key word here is 'moderation'.
Having some viable ways to interact with the hands and decks of your opponents I imagine will create an environment where people are less inclined to zero in on a deterministic, non-interactive game plan where your entire deck revolves around building up to one key turn while minimizing the ways in which your opponent can interact with you. Conversely, if you lose one of your key cards, you more or less lose the game. I am not opposed to these "tunnel-vision" combo decks in principle, but I do think there needs to be reasonable answers to these decks for every class and archetype. Otherwise, in theory at least, we end up in a rock-paper-scissor environment where combo beats control, control beats aggro and aggro beats combo. My philosophy is that any class or archetype should have a reasonable chance to win against any other class or archetype.
By introducing some more disruption tools we encourage players to diversify their decks, including a number of threats instead of throwing every apple in one basket. Personally I like the idea of that.
I think this is a very high quality thread. I think Hearthstone could benefit from having variance particularly in the start of the game reduced by a little bit. Examples of this:
* Players start with one or two more cards each.
* Players start the game with a little bit more life, like 35 (To reduce the chance of noninteractive early game steamroll matches).
However I am a huge fan of the emergent complexity and gameplay that arises from mechanics that include a degree of randomness. This is why discover is my favourite mechanic.
Edit: Maybe also relevant to the discussion: I play wild exclusively.
This brings me to another flaw with the game, as I see it: The lack of options for interacting with your opponent's game plan. I can see why one would be wary of introducing cards like these: losing key cards due to discard mechanics or similar is not fun, and one could certainly make a case that too much meddling with your opponents' resources could in itself result in a non-interactive game environment. For instance: There are decks in MTG whose plan is to discard their opponent's entire hand and thus leave them with no ways to interact. That has the potential to be oppressive in and of itself.
I think the key word here is 'moderation'.
Having some viable ways to interact with the hands and decks of your opponents I imagine will create an environment where people are less inclined to zero in on a deterministic, non-interactive game plan where your entire deck revolves around building up to one key turn while minimizing the ways in which your opponent can interact with you. Conversely, if you lose one of your key cards, you more or less lose the game. I am not opposed to these "tunnel-vision" combo decks in principle, but I do think there needs to be reasonable answers to these decks for every class and archetype. Otherwise, in theory at least, we end up in a rock-paper-scissor environment where combo beats control, control beats aggro and aggro beats combo. My philosophy is that any class or archetype should have a reasonable chance to win against any other class or archetype.
By introducing some more disruption tools we encourage players to diversify their decks, including a number of threats instead of throwing every apple in one basket. Personally I like the idea of that.
I think this is a very high quality thread. I think Hearthstone could benefit from having variance particularly in the start of the game reduced by a little bit. Examples of this:
* Players start with one or two more cards each.
* Players start the game with a little bit more life, like 35 (To reduce the chance of noninteractive early game steamroll matches).
However I am a huge fan of the emergent complexity and gameplay that arises from mechanics that include a degree of randomness. This is why discover is my favourite mechanic.
Edit: Maybe also relevant to the discussion: I play wild exclusively.