Activating your own effects

I was wondering why it’s ok for classes to activate their own effects like Frenzy cards?
I remember very clearly that Secrets were altered so that they could not be activated by the person playing them.
We now have rogues and other classes that are activating Frenzy on their turn for mana reductions as well as other effects and so I was curious as to why it’s different?

I think the cards mostly were designed with different goals.

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Well, why wouldn’t they be? You’re asking why the game runs like X. It’s like asking why it’s based around 30 HP.

The answer is simply that it was designed that way; and secrets activating your turn was not.

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Design is complicated and not just in the way of balance:

Sometimes developers want us to have a certain experience with a mechanic, like frenzy, where the minion got “hurt” and survived, no matter how, so will go ballistic.

Secrets were designed (evidentally) to be like “traps” of other games, and thus are triggered by your opponent, who gets the experience of working through these traps/secrets without truly knowing what they are till after the fact.

I imagine this sort of line of thought plays into why cards work the way they do more than anything else.

If you get time, i would recommend watching mark rosewater’s “Magic The Gathering: Twenty Years, Twenty Lessons Learned” on youtube. It gives an interesting insight on card design and what sort of thought goes into it.

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Mage did it all the time with freeze board and self ping acolyte of pain if I remember correctly.
Secrets needed to activate in the opponent’s turn beacuse Paladins would equip a true silver champion plus an eye for an eye and hit the biggest thing the other player had just to get some lethals in the early days.

But that’s not true. Secrets were altered way back so they could not be triggered by the person playing them. Prior to that, they could be.
I was here and I remember.

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Yeah, i do too, but that’s a “Aw heck, we didn’t consider those cards we’ve made especifically in this way would be used in that way” situation when the game was new.

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I am abit confused.
Are other heroes able to trigger secrets by the person playing them?
Is mage not able to ping frenzy minions?

I have been playing way less nowadays.

Frenzy seems much the same to me. Perhaps that was their intention that they are able to be self triggered , but I see little difference in the power of the two effects.
I mean, isn’t that why they never give mage Deathrattles? So they can’t kill their own minions for the advantage?

I just see Frenzy as a version of the old Enrage keyword. The owning player could/can proc those, so why wouldn’t Frenzy work the same.

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idk. The keywords seem roughly the same in power to me, and it confuses me a bit as I remember players telling me that Mage didn’t have deathrattles because of it’s hero power and burn spells making it too easy to trigger it’s own effects.
So Frenzy confuses me, plus lately i have seen other classes deliberately activating DR’s.

I mean, we have a deathrattle that can be easily killed in starscrier. As far as design intent goes, i think they purposefully wanted to make frenzy able to be self activated since the set has cards like Saurfang, and they gave Mage and Rogue acess to Peon. Just like they gave activation spells for deathrattle for Hunter.

It’s seemingly baked in that certain classes will have a easier time activating frenzy. I do n’t think mage has few deathrattles because it would be easy to activate, but simply becaus it won’t combine with the class fantasy and supposed strengths.

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Ok. It still doesn’t seem right to me, but I get that it was intentional now.

I remember the change to Secrets coming down mainly because of Eye for an Eye giving Paladin big burst damage potential, or a way to force a draw in a game that was lost. Burst was against class design most of the time, and draws are an outcome that the design team seems to want to avoid making common.

I mean, the short answer is “that’s not how they wanted Secrets to work.” Most Secrets aren’t designed in a way that the change makes any difference, and it potentially limits design space if they wanted to make secrets that activate when the hero takes damage.

Frenzy, on the other hand, seems aimed at getting you to think about how to activate them. You compare them to Secrets, but they naturally seem a lot more like Enrage effects to me and activating those yourself were mostly the only way to make them good.

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I knew it came down to some kind of burst damage that players complained about. Couldn’t remember what the deal was:) It’s been a minute!

Loved playing Eye for an Eye during this time. I have more health than you do? Great, I play Eye for an Eye and throw my face at your biggest minion for lethal.

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every single class can trigger frenzy effects

we have several neutrals able to deal damage to friendly minions like pen flinger and the augmerchants!

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Yeah, Sage reminded me, I could not remember what the issue was but I knew it had to do with huge damage from hand:)!

OP isn’t saying Mage can’t ping frenzy cards.

What is with peoples reading comprehension?

Do your kids say to you “I am hungry” and you reply “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you mean.”

/facepalm

When is the moon elevator arriving? (hint: thats sarcasm!)

Sorry my reading comprehension isn’t on par.

Hence I asked.

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