Hearthstone's New Formats Will Balance Decks For New Players

Fanghawk

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Hearthstone's New Formats Will Balance Decks For New Players

Hearthstone will introduce new Standard and Wild game formats to provide a more balanced game for new players.

After two years Hearthstone remains an impressively fun card game, as long-time players can attest. However the experience isn't quite the same for newcomers, <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/165377-Blizzard-Entertainments-Ben-Brode-Talks-Hearthstone-And-Power-Creep>who are getting crushed by advanced decks before they can even learn all the rules. Thankfully Blizzard is introducing new game formats that should allow for more balanced play. Standard format games will use decks of the most recent card types, while Wild format allows for decks from any expansion you'd like.

So let's say you're a new player still coming to grips with Hearthstone's systems. You'll want to stick with Standard games, which use a combination of Basic, Classic, and the most recent card types. That creates a certain baseline of balanced cards while still giving room for players to experiment with the latest releases. Standard format will be available in Friendly Challenges, Casual Play, and Ranked Play.

Once you have a strong card collection, you can turn to Wild format. Wild games allow players to construct decks from every Hearthstone card type, so all players will know what they're getting into. Wild format will even have its own rankings, so you can try to achieve Legend in both Ranked Play modes if you choose. That being said, you can only earn season rewards in your highest rank, so it might pay to be selective.

When Blizzard launches Hearthstone's formats later this year, Standard games will include Basic, Classic, Blackrock Mountain, Grand Tournament, League of Explorers, and the Spring 2016 expansion cards. Once the new calendar year starts, older card types will be cycled out to allow for new expansions. Cards from older expansions and adventures will no longer be available for purchase in the shop - if you want them afterwards, you'll have to craft them with Arcane Dust. On the plus side, cards that are currently uncraftable will be unlocked as their card type is phased out. Adventures you've already purchased will remain available. Finally, Blizzard will increase the total number of decks from 9 to 18.

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While this might make it harder to grab some of those legendary cards you hoped for, Blizzard's move should make Hearthstone more accessible for new players without sacrificing the experience of early adopters. That's a good move in the long run, and should have us constructing new Hearthstone decks for years to come.

Source: <a href=http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/blog/19995505>Battle.net

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totheendofsin

some asshole made me set this up
Jul 31, 2009
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This is good for the long term health of the game, though I'm not a fan of removing stuff from the store

also fucking finally on more deck slots, 9 is not enough
 

RJ 17

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Nov 27, 2011
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Eh, fuck'em. They lost me on this game when they came out and admitted that they intentionally give new players crap cards.
 

shintakie10

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RJ 17 said:
Eh, fuck'em. They lost me on this game when they came out and admitted that they intentionally give new players crap cards.
On that note, Ben Brode outright said that this change means they can go back and fix a lot of the bad cards in classic since its far more important that those be good in the new format.
 

Gizen

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Yes, these changes will benefit new players... so long as they only stick to standard. Since older sets will only be obtainable by crafting, the Wild format will pretty much be restricted to players who've been around a long time, or who are rich enough to buy a bunch of garbage packs just to get the dust to craft old cards. Goddamn that's such a stupid change.
 

rcs619

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Gizen said:
Yes, these changes will benefit new players... so long as they only stick to standard. Since older sets will only be obtainable by crafting, the Wild format will pretty much be restricted to players who've been around a long time, or who are rich enough to buy a bunch of garbage packs just to get the dust to craft old cards. Goddamn that's such a stupid change.
It's literally the exact same thing we have now... except for a new format that will be much more accessible to new players, and keep some of the completely insane combos/synergies out of the meta.

Would you rather they never do anything to address the new player experience? Would you rather they *only* have a limited mode like Standard where older players might feel penalized? I think this is a good way to do it. There's a little bit for everybody, and the fact that Standard will be the new official tourney format will make sure all the old players don't just stick to Wild forever.

It's a net positive or even-split for everyone.

shintakie10 said:
On that note, Ben Brode outright said that this change means they can go back and fix a lot of the bad cards in classic since its far more important that those be good in the new format.
Yeah, the rotating format is really going to let them control the power-creep a lot better. It also frees them up a lot to tweak the older cards without creating unstoppable frankensteinian monstrosity decks a year down the line.

Wild mode is going to get completely insane further down the line though, lol. Trolden should have a lot of ammo at the very least.

I just hope they give some of the weaker classes some love when the changes come around. Without GvG or Naxx, Warlock is going to get pretty dang hard.
 

Diablo1099_v1legacy

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Dec 12, 2009
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You know, it's funny, I only got Battle.net for Hearthstone and how I own Heroes of the Storm, Diablo 3 and just got Starcraft 2 this weekend.

OT: Have to admit, this sounds like a neat idea.
Have to hand it to Blizzard, while they don't hit all the right notes all the time, they still provide the best post-launch support for their games out of any other developer I know.
I mean, there might be someone who does it better, but hell, they were still patching Diablo 2 for crying out loud.
 

shintakie10

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rcs619 said:
Yeah, the rotating format is really going to let them control the power-creep a lot better. It also frees them up a lot to tweak the older cards without creating unstoppable frankensteinian monstrosity decks a year down the line.

Wild mode is going to get completely insane further down the line though, lol. Trolden should have a lot of ammo at the very least.

I just hope they give some of the weaker classes some love when the changes come around. Without GvG or Naxx, Warlock is going to get pretty dang hard.
Warlock will always have some form of viability due to their hero power being so strong. Zoolock will almost always be a thing since it doesn't actually require specific minions. You'll have to fudge around some cards and the loss of Darkbomb and Implosion will really hurt at first, but they'll figure out ways around it.

The only thing that's a bummer is this will basically be the death of tribe decks in standard. Beast Hunter loses out on both good early game options (Haunted Creeper and Webspinner) without any good replacements for them. The loss of Webspinner will especially suck since it was good for a variety of reasons.

Mech decks will just not exist since GvG will be out of the picture. Dragon decks as we know them will be playable for now, but next time absolutely wont since BRM will be out of the picture.
 

Willinium

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. . . .Am I reading this right when it says that Wild Decks can include any card? Meaning that you can have a Demon Paladin? Or Frothing Warlocks? Because if so this might become very VERY interesting.
 

RedDeadFred

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May 13, 2009
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Willinium said:
. . . .Am I reading this right when it says that Wild Decks can include any card? Meaning that you can have a Demon Paladin? Or Frothing Warlocks? Because if so this might become very VERY interesting.
No, it's just letting you design decks with the full card pool.

OT: I think this is a great idea and personally, can't wait for the meta to not include Piloted Shredder and Dr. Balance.
 

Gizen

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rcs619 said:
Gizen said:
Yes, these changes will benefit new players... so long as they only stick to standard. Since older sets will only be obtainable by crafting, the Wild format will pretty much be restricted to players who've been around a long time, or who are rich enough to buy a bunch of garbage packs just to get the dust to craft old cards. Goddamn that's such a stupid change.
It's literally the exact same thing we have now... except for a new format that will be much more accessible to new players, and keep some of the completely insane combos/synergies out of the meta.

Would you rather they never do anything to address the new player experience? Would you rather they *only* have a limited mode like Standard where older players might feel penalized? I think this is a good way to do it. There's a little bit for everybody, and the fact that Standard will be the new official tourney format will make sure all the old players don't just stick to Wild forever.

It's a net positive or even-split for everyone.
What I would rather they do is make BOTH formats accessible to new players rather than limiting one of them to ONLY older players. Having a new format is great, but there's no reason to simultaneously make the old format inaccessible.

It's not literally the exact same thing we have now, because right now I can buy a GvG pack and get 5 cards from that set for 100g. Sure they're random, and maybe they're not great, but no matter what, that's cheaper than crafting those same 5 cards. Because even if it's just 4 commons and a rare, to craft that is 260 dust. A garbage pack on average gives you 40 dust. That means that what I once could've potentially gotten for 100g will now cost me 700.

For 700g, I can get a wing in Naxx that'll give me 8 commons, 2 rares, and a legendary. To craft that instead is 2120 dust, or 53 disenchanted packs, or 5300g.

This is not the exact same thing as now, because right now I CAN craft things, or I can ALSO buy packs. As of this going live, I will ONLY be able to craft, the option to buy has been taken away, which means to get those cards is now just straight up harder than it was before. It costs either more time, or more money, both of which are punishing towards new players.

So it goes back to what I said before, these changes are great for new players... assuming those new players only ever play standard and never ever play Wild with the big boys because they'll get shit on even harder than they would have before. This change is completely stupid.

Wanna know what would be a good change? Let's make Standard and Wild Formats, let's increase deck slots, and let's NOT arbitrarily make old cards inaccessible for absolutely no reason. If the worry is that people will get confused over what is and isn't standard legal, just move the olds sets into a separate tab in the shop specifically listed as Wild or Legacy sets. It's not rocket science here.

And in the long run, this will hurt old players who want to play Wild as well. People stop playing over time, they drift to other games. You need to keep a steady influx of new players to replace the old ones that leave. Blizzard of all fucking companies should know this, having run WoW for over a decade. Hell, WoW's deterioration started when they reached the point that they couldn't keep enough new players coming to replace the ones that left anymore. When new players can't get into Wild because the cards are just arbitrarily more difficult to acquire, and will continue to get more difficult to get as more and more sets become Wild, the playerbase for that format will dwindle until standard's pretty much the only thing that remains anyways. It won't be quick, will take a long ass time, but with changes like this it'll happen eventually. There's a reason why almost nobody plays Vintage in MtG.

EDIT: Oh, and of course, because old Adventures aren't purchaseable anymore, and you can't craft a boss fight, it's not just old cards are more difficult to obtain, but some of the game's only solo content is just being made permanently and completely unavailable to new players as well.
 

SlumlordThanatos

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Wait.

No Naxx?

That's the set with all of the anti-aggro cards. Zombie Chow, Deathlord, Sludge Belcher, and the Warlock's Darkbomb are all gone. So many vitally important cards are just...gone. Gotta craft them now.

I'm really not sure about this change. The more sensible solution would be to either make Curse of Naxxramas free or to drastically reduce its price...but apparently Blizz is more concerned with profit than making their game more accessible.
 

Gizen

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SlumlordThanatos said:
Wait.

No Naxx?

That's the set with all of the anti-aggro cards. Zombie Chow, Deathlord, Sludge Belcher, and the Warlock's Darkbomb are all gone. So many vitally important cards are just...gone. Gotta craft them now.

I'm really not sure about this change. The more sensible solution would be to either make Curse of Naxxramas free or to drastically reduce its price...but apparently Blizz is more concerned with profit than making their game more accessible.
Does making it unpurchaseable count as reducing the price? They're making it so that old adventures can't be purchased at all unless you already own at least one wing before they're rotate out of standard. The ONLY way to get those cards will be to craft them with dust.
 

shrekfan246

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Cards from older expansions and adventures will no longer be available for purchase in the shop - if you want them afterwards, you'll have to craft them with Arcane Dust. On the plus side, cards that are currently uncraftable will be unlocked as their card type is phased out. Adventures you've already purchased will remain available. Finally, Blizzard will increase the total number of decks from 9 to 18.
Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but unless they drastically increase how easily players can get Arcane Dust, this sounds like it's going to just make half of the cards (or more) currently in the game nigh-unobtainable to new players.

I've been playing the game semi-regularly since it had its full launch, never paying money to get anything, and I think it'd be charitable to say that I have half of the cards. I haven't ever had the dust to craft a Legendary, though if I'd never crafted infinitely more useful cards I probably could've managed one by now. I do have all of the Adventure wings, but I've bought likely 20 or less packs for each of the expansions.

Also, this might just be a personal thing but I can't really get behind them phasing out the single-player content, either. While it's by no means what keeps me playing, it's one thing that's kept my card-game-interest focused steadfastly on Hearthstone, because practically no other card game does anything like that (and if they do, they're typically not "just" a card game, but more like an RPG or strategy game with cards thrown in). I mean, it's not going to really impact me because I have all of the current Adventure wings already, but it's a principle thing.
 

rcs619

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shintakie10 said:
Warlock will always have some form of viability due to their hero power being so strong. Zoolock will almost always be a thing since it doesn't actually require specific minions. You'll have to fudge around some cards and the loss of Darkbomb and Implosion will really hurt at first, but they'll figure out ways around it.

The only thing that's a bummer is this will basically be the death of tribe decks in standard. Beast Hunter loses out on both good early game options (Haunted Creeper and Webspinner) without any good replacements for them. The loss of Webspinner will especially suck since it was good for a variety of reasons.

Mech decks will just not exist since GvG will be out of the picture. Dragon decks as we know them will be playable for now, but next time absolutely wont since BRM will be out of the picture.
On the bright side, at least the tribes situation is fixable. They can always release more mechs, dragons or beasts.

I'd love to see them use this as a chance to promote other, or entirely new, tribes though. Make pirates finally properly viable, or finally give us an official ogre tribe (which would be hilarious).

And on the bright side, most of the core handlock cards are basic or core. So, I look forward to the future, inevitable handlock variations :D

shrekfan246 said:
Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but unless they drastically increase how easily players can get Arcane Dust, this sounds like it's going to just make half of the cards (or more) currently in the game nigh-unobtainable to new players.

I've been playing the game semi-regularly since it had its full launch, never paying money to get anything, and I think it'd be charitable to say that I have half of the cards. I haven't ever had the dust to craft a Legendary, though if I'd never crafted infinitely more useful cards I probably could've managed one by now. I do have all of the Adventure wings, but I've bought likely 20 or less packs for each of the expansions.

Also, this might just be a personal thing but I can't really get behind them phasing out the single-player content, either. While it's by no means what keeps me playing, it's one thing that's kept my card-game-interest focused steadfastly on Hearthstone, because practically no other card game does anything like that (and if they do, they're typically not "just" a card game, but more like an RPG or strategy game with cards thrown in). I mean, it's not going to really impact me because I have all of the current Adventure wings already, but it's a principle thing.
I think it's mostly to push the new standard format. If they kept around all the old packs and all the old adventures (which would be absolutely useless as far as standard is concerned) there's a risk that players may just kind of, stick with the wild format and never switch over. It sucks from a collector's standpoint yeah, but I can see their reasoning.

There's always the potential for them to bring them back as special events or something. Win old cards that aren't available any more, or something. Or bring back old adventures for limited times. It just kind of depends how they want to handle it.
 

shrekfan246

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May 26, 2011
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rcs619 said:
It sucks from a collector's standpoint yeah, but I can see their reasoning.
I guess I am also a bit disappointed because I did want to get all of the cards, and now that's basically going to be impossible. I like my stupid gimmick decks, and I want to continue playing the "current" game mode. There are still loads of cards I need that could actually flesh out said gimmicks to be more useful, though, and whenever this change rolls around it looks like I'll need to give up any hope of ever getting, say, Varian Wrynn for my Warrior or Aviana for my Druid, or The Mistcaller for my Shaman. And lord knows I can kiss goodbye any chance of getting all of them.

I dunno, I just don't think I'm comfortable with the idea of them essentially segregating the playerbase of Hearthstone. I can't imagine I'm the only person who's been playing for a very long time and still doesn't have most of the really good cards, and from the sounds of things we're going to be forced to either continue on like we have been but with even less chance of ever having good cards to climb the ladder, or be sectioned off into Standard with all of the people who don't have all of the cards, and thus lose access to a great number of cards that we potentially really enjoy.

I'll be the first person to admit I know very little about how game balance works, but on the surface I just can't imagine this is actually going to make the game better long-term.

EDIT: Also, planned obsolescence in a digital card game is just really upsetting. If they're going to be separating game modes and having one use only specific expansions anyway, I don't see why they need to straight up remove the ability to easily get cards from the excluded expansions. No new players are ever going to switch to Wild. I guess that could be their intention, though I can't fathom why because I feel like Standard is going to be very prone to experiencing the same problems Vanilla Hearthstone did to a lot of people, in that it got far too stale too quickly due to a limited card pool. Unless they crank out new cards at an even faster rate than they are right now, I don't see how Standard is going to really hold much interest long-term, and Wild is just going to be overrun by the same type of boring netdecks that we see on the ladder right now anyway. And if they do crank out cards faster, then if they don't increase the rate of gold/dust collection people still won't be able to keep up...

Yeah, I might just be overthinking or looking at it the wrong way, but this doesn't seem like a good idea to me.
 

maddawg IAJI

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Feb 12, 2009
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Its all well and good until you remember that they have to remove the old stuff from the store. This'll make it harder to people who will need a lot of the Naxx stuff or GvG stuff, especially since the latter has so many meta defining cards. Still, I'm all for a format that straight up excludes Dr.Boom and Piloted Shredder without having to give them the Warsong Commander treatment.
 

NPC009

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I run a basic + expert only mage deck just for funsies. I got to rank 5 with it back in the old days and my skills have increased since then. Poor, poor newbies :(

Anyway: new format to welcome newcomers? Great! Building a big wall around some of the most useful cards? Not so great. More like bad, really. It will only widen the gap between new players and the ones who've been playing since before Naxx. Besides, aside from offering good value, those adventures are a lot of fun!
 

laggyteabag

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It makes sense in the long run, because they can release the cards that they want to release, now, and not have to worry about it not getting picked because of some of the better cards in gvg or naxx, or having a OP unintentional synergy, like Grim Patron and Warsong Commander, but the Wild mode is going to be stupid after a while, almost to the point of unplayable if they dont balance some of the older cards once that have been phased out.

I understand what they are doing, and why they are doing it, but it just stings a little if you have invested money into content that is now practically non-existant.
 

UsefulPlayer 1

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Doesn't this make the game explicitly pay-to-win? If you cycle out the old cards, then players who buy the 50-packs or the Adventures at launch have a distinct advantage over other Standard players. By the time they catch up in gold the cards would be cycled out.

I guess what Blizzard is saying is you should grind for a year, save a ton of gold, can buy pack/adventures on launch, and then save for another year.

Also, I hate how this means a number of cards will never be good/viable. I will never be able to use Neptulon with Everyfin is awesome.