Class-Specific Quests/Heroes are Bad for the Game

Multiplayer Discussion
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I’ve been reluctant to comment about this because I wasn’t sure I could make a compelling argument. My gut told me this assumption was true, but every logical argument I came up with was followed with “Okay, well, how is this situation different from not having quests?” To which my reply was “it’s the same argument, only with quests.”

  • They create archetypal decks that don’t change much over expansions.
  • They create a significant power boosts to deck that would play that style anyway, thus, the quest have no drawbacks. (frost mage jaina, anyone?)
  • Some classes have much stronger quests than others, making them baked-in to any deck in future expansions (Warlocks suck. Seriously.)
  • Quests are only interesting for a very short amount of time before just becoming irritating to the average player.

Same argument only without quests. This is not compelling. So why do they feel like such horsecrap?

Let’s look at the even/odd decks for a moment. These were ultimately seen as a design failure, to the point of removal from wild shortly after being phased out. Blizzard recognized that these cards ultimately served no function without their original deck implementation. Not only were the decks extremely constrained, but there really was no pleasurable way to keep the card effects relevant other than within those constraints (An electric eel MIGHT be useful once your deck was mostly empty, but otherwise it was just a poor value minion).

While not inherently a problem (sometimes you discover cards that don’t fit with your deck anyway), it was consistently problematic enough that game removal was probably the best design decision, and given that so few cards fit into these categories, it wasn’t a huge content loss for blizzard.

The days of Baku paladin sucked. No one in their right mind would argue otherwise. It was a narrow deck with narrow fun, versatility, and design scope. But the REASON it sucked wasn’t because the permanent power upgrade, but instead it was that you got the permanent power upgrade as early as turn 1 - 2.

In fact, I’d argue that these permanent upgrades are fairly compelling to gameplay. Example: as Kripparian correctly points out, C’thun’s deployment to the hearthstone scene made almost every class see play as viable at some point. That one card could make every class viable is genius, and yet with quests, blizzard did not learn the lesson that C’thun gave us:

All classes should share access to cards the provide permanent upgrades.

Notice the title above? CLASS quests are the issue here, not the design of quests themselves. N’zoth isn’t a brilliant card because it’s powerful, it’s brilliant because anyone, at any expansion, can drag it out of the dust and make use of it.

Let’s take the un’goro priest quest, the 40 health one. Now let’s make the quest neutral.

Almost every deck features deathrattle cards. It would have seen play in most decks and it would not have felt archetypal. N’zoth would have obviously synergized with it, but now add 9 quests to the game that were all neutral.

See where I’m going with this? suddenly the game and quests are WAY more interesting. Suddenly WILD becomes way more interesting. Now, people’s permanent upgrades are chosen, rather than pre-fitted. With enough options, quests could become a staple part of the game, and because any class can utilize them, they don’t feel cheap or per-constructed.

But perhaps the most compelling incentive for de-class-ifying quests and heroes this isn’t for the players, but for Blizzard:

Blizzards designs huge amount of cards and content that never see play, ultimately wasting their time and money. (This new warrior quest, in the wake of Dr. Boom, is absolutely worthless, but it could be REALLY USEFUL TO A LOT OF OTHER CLASSES!)

Blizzard could easily test this by creating a tavern brawl that makes all quests/heroes available to any class, and allowing players to pick them even if they don’t own them (I do not recommend using the uldam quests. I see these as ultimate failures of design due to several of them being effective as early as turn three. Looking at your gimmicky-a**, rogue.) I believe blue would find this to be an very interesting brawl.

I rest my case. Comments?

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To be honest, all the newer quests are extremely boring compared to the old ones. But i agree with you on a lot of your points.

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I couldn’t disagree more strongly.

Rogue and Priest both have Quests that actually reduce the win rates for those archetypes.

The Successful Quests are essential for the archetypes in question, as playing them on one without immediate impact is a bigger cost than they are credited for.

The class limitations allows for design that couldn’t exist otherwise. The UNG Priest Quest might provide an exorbitant advantage to Rogue and Hunter decks by covering their traditional class weakness. The SoU Druid Quest is useless for any other class, and so on.

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Yup.
Look at Inspire, C’thun, wind fury, etc. The redundancy is apparent when they have to exclude it from arena just because these cards are no longer supported beyond 1 expansion.

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Agreed. It feels like the Devs have started designing decks rather than interesting cards. Take Quest Druid for example, half the deck comes from Uldum. It’s clear they designed the cards specifically to support the quest.

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…what ??? adding cards casual players enjoy isnt a waste of money
not everyone is focused only on climbing the ladder
i know competitive obsessed players dont like it but they have their cards
whats wrong with the rest of us getting cards we enjoy too??

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The class limitations allows for design that couldn’t exist otherwise.

But now I flip the underlying philosophy of my original caveat, and place the onus upon the one who retorts.

How does declassifying quests cheapen deck archetypes? Why can’t those archetypes be solved through the class cards, rather than through quests that require them to cookie-cut?

If you cannot address these questions that could be universally solved with or without quests, then you don’t actually have a point to argue, because class specific quests are not the contingent issue of your own point. If we remove class-specific quests from your argument, you point about archetypes still holds.

That sounds like a failure of the design of the quest.

Thus, I find your argument uncompelling.

…what ??? adding cards casual players enjoy isnt a waste of money

When you are in a development cycle while producing games, every card you create has to be designed, catalogued, illustrated, coded, Recorded, debugged, and recoded when reclassified. All of that costs money.

These quests are a GIANT development sink, and most don’t see much use.

In the eyes of a developer, that’s a loss.

A bad design archetype often ensures a class is out of commission for a while. remember all those warlock discard mechanics? NO one could utilize them! The entire set was basically scrapped. Loss.

not everyone is focused only on climbing the ladder
whats wrong with the rest of us getting cards we enjoy too??

There’s nothing wrong with it, but quests often define meta for a scant few classes, and often that meta carried long past the card’s expiration date do to shoddy design. It’s easier to balance, but ultimately shunts a class into a specific playstyle.

You know what that means? These new quests are BORING. Playing against a rogue that get ancient blades on turn three is BORING.

If nothing else, THAT’S the most compelling argument for casuals. Jade druid wasn’t terrible because it was too powerful, it was terrible because a brand new player knew exactly what to expect when facing a druid, specifically the right to resign or be flogged over the course of ten minutes.

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Those points have nothing to do with the cards being Quest cards, rather than their being class cards.

The same can be applied to minions, weapons, artifacts, enchantments, dungondles, and whatever else can be devised as a class card.

What I gather from you is you would have all archetype defining cards neutral. The Hearthstone team moved away from that philosophy back in 2017 with the advent of increasing the card pool. You are two years late for this rant.

Did you just return from a hiatus that started back in 2016?

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Back in the “good ol’ days” aggro decks consisted of the same 24ish neutral cards and a handful of class spells.

It was exceedingly boring. This thread makes me long for the dislike button.

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quest rogue isnt boring is fun to play !
same with the new warlock one

even the warrior one i love using the 1 damage to your minions weapon for some synergies i hope we get some new weapons on this expansion ( with at least 3 durability )

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quest rogue isnt boring is fun to play !

It’s fun because of the ‘other class’ cards, not because of the quest. discover mechanics are interesting. An extremely solid, permanent upgrade to your character that is easily 4 times better than you original ability for just doing what you were already going to do isn’t what I’d call an ‘interesting dynamic’.

same with the new warlock one

Same situation as above. The interesting aspect isn’t the quest, it’s the chaos of the deck. The reshuffling is cool, the ability is lame. Both situations, the quest is a stabling factor, rather than an interactive one. That’s what makes the quests boring.

Back in the “good ol’ days” aggro decks consisted of the same 24ish neutral cards and a handful of class spells.

Slippery slope argument; I don’t buy it. It is easier to adjust a class to a quest than it is a quest to to class due to cascading power creep (5/5 rogue quest, anyone?).

As pointed out above, C’Thun was compelling because he was neutral, the diversity of options you had interacting with him could be nudged around other classes other, rather than around themselves.

There are very, very easy ways to fix aggro, blizzard just decided that patches the pirate should be stupid viable for an entire year.

Those points have nothing to do with the cards being Quest cards, rather than their being class cards.

Yeah uh, which points, specifically? Mind using the quote tool so your dismissal doesn’t seem lazy?

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Started?

C’Thun dates back over 3 years now, along with the Jade Druid and Pirate Warrior decks from the YotK (and there were plenty more).

YotK had a higher number of cards in the bench (enough to justify the first Rotation) to better allow for archetypes supporting cards rather than just stand alone designs that would fit into certain archetypes.

For Quest Druid specifically they did add a lot of great cards in SoU. I remember Cube Warlock packing a ton of Kobolds back in its heyday.

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Not buying.

Insert “Weapon”, “Hero Card”, “Minion” into all instances of Quest in any of your posts and you produce the same results. Swap Druid Quest for Kingsbane being a Rogue only weapon, or Hagatha being a Shaman exclusive Hero card.

The perfect example is your idolized archetype of C’Thun. Does it matter that C’Thun is a minion? Hell no (except Secrets and Rats interactions, but not as a fundamental building block of the archetype)! If it was a neutral Legendary spell that did the same amount of damage and summoned a minion of the same size it would be the same.

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I think Quests can be fun when they enable another archetype for the class that they don’t normally play. But when quests are fast and goes well into a class its not great for the game. Being able to consistently complete them on turn 4-5 aint a good idea.

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We have those slow to complete, uncommon archetypes Quests in Warlock and Paladin. And neither is great and see very little Ranked play because generally they’re only good against slow control decks.

The issue with slow Quests in weak archetypes is that they have to be uninteractive finishers of some sort to justify playing them in the first place and losing that Mulligan card for so long in the game. And that’s a very toxic game pattern that the Old Quest Rogue had.

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I honestly feel that quests and heroes were a design mistake from the get go.

Some classes get quests that are strong enough to make a whole new uber-powerful archetype, and the other classes get nothing. In the Un’goro meta the two classes with viable quest archetypes were rogue and warrior (quest mage got more powerful over time, quest druid saw fringe play. The rest were hot garbage).

Quest rogue was one of the most disgusting decks ever created. I had numerous friends who all quite the game because of quest rogue. Despite the quest needing several nerfs(!), they didn’t come back.
Quest warrior was a little bit better in that in some games you actually didn’t want to play the reward because armor up was better. In some games you actually mulliganed your quest. Still, it was oppressively the same way all the quests were oppressively. If you play a quest deck, you play your own game. As an opponent, there is nothing I can do to stop you from completing that quest. No interaction. The deck just plays itself regardless of what is going on in the game.

Now looking at SoU, druid and shaman were the clear winners. And boy do I wish Blizzard had any regrets about the quest mechanic. The win conditions grant you so much value, that, much like quest rogue, your only hope was to either rush the quest deck down as fast as possible before they complete their quest and play their swing card, or have brawls, more brawls, warpaths, and try to fatigue them out.
Granted, quest shaman and quest druid aren’t nearly as oppressive to midrange and control as quest rogue was, but why design a set where the decks build themselves, and the games play themselves out the same way, with little input from the player?

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You are either greatly hyperbolising, or just trolling.

There’s no way you can honestly believe what you just said lmao.

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Ahh back to the good old days of vanila HS were pretty much every deck was the same 23 or 24 cards and only the hero power decided.