Many of these changes are to cards and strategies that are bad experiences to play against even if they’re not overly powerful. We’re also adjusting a few early power outliers
This is such a great quote to see them not just balance based on mean win rates but on game by game experience…
Save a couple of stubborn individuals, we already know they do that
They’ve had a separate category for nerf targets called “feels bad, no agency” for ages now xD
And there are people here in the forums (I’ve seen more than a couple) that would argue to death that some of the broken cards (that STILL exist even after the patch) are fine (“their winrate is not even that high bro” kinda argument) and people ‘need to play around them’. Only to see them get nerfed in the next patch as expected. The amount of denial and egocentric self-entitled fellas I’ve seen here are only to be compared in toxicity with the Starcraft 2 comunity.
From a business perspective it makes sense. Easier to upset a smaller player base of high ranking players than continue to upset a vastly large portion of the player base. The good players will adjust and find ways to win with nerfed decks anyway or switch to something else.
This is not a change so you just noticed it now. They do the mistake to take “Sentiment” as a priority all the time. They killed the Quasar rogue for example when it had a horrible win rate so it was extremely unfair objectively just because people whined.
The problem with taking whiners seriously, is that humans are subconsciously hardwired to want some hardship when they play games or they find them dull so you make a worse game if you try to make it too easy and too comfy.
It’s self-harm. The whining players do not know what they want. Humans are hardwired to want some hardship and that’s subconscious.
Basically if you make a game that is too easy and too comfy you make it dull. You may not have whining but you may not have players.
I find this to be a rather misguided perspective. Catering to forum whining leads to poor decision making. There are bad/mediocre decks that some players find are annoying to oppose. I don’t think that’s a good reason to eliminate those decks.
But let’s say you do think it’s a good reason. If the deck has a low play rate, then there aren’t all that many players being annoyed by it, so there’s no reason to eliminate it. And if the deck has a high play rate, that means a lot of players like playing it, so why would you want to take away the enjoyment from those players?