Frequent card changes can only be supported with a complete overhaul of the refund policies.
As it stands, if the Devs go along with nerfing decks every couple of weeks, the f2p community will just walk away from the game, and with good reason.
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That might have been true if the nerfs were like the ones for older expansions (i.e. nuke the card from orbit and ensure it never sees play again exept if you misclick in your deckbuilder)
As these nerfs stand, I donāt think any of the affected decks have been made āunplayableā. Their power level has been toned down, but I think they are still viable (e.g. nerfing SoR hasnāt much affected my experience as Galakrond Warrior).
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On the off-hand chance this is read Iāll address my two concerns with the increased pace of nerfing. One concern can be controlled by you, the devs, but the other is about the community in general.
My first concern is on how the increased pace of nerfing (also buffing?) might destroy archetypes based on how nerfs were done. Galak Shaman nerf #1 didnāt kill the deck and as you alluded to another version was found but we merely need to jump back to the Mage nerfs where you saw nerfs which absolutely harmed an archetype and a class in a dramatic way. If your nerfs, overall, are more like nudges then this is fine but if theyāre tossing a deck out then it becomes a MAJOR issue quickly as archetype stability will be an issue and cost will dramatically increase.
The second concern, which is more community focused, is that a faster and more consistent nerf strategy will cause people to stop focusing on their decks and games and instead focus on ājust nerf itā focus. Part of what makes CCGs, to me, is the tinkering and designing for a meta. Essentially the āsecond meta waveā after a meta establishes and poking holes into that meta. What weāve seen in DoD is that the āsecond waveā has barely been allowed to take shape before major changes. My concern if the idea is for a monthly shake-up is that the game never hits a full evolution cycle on decks-counter decks and weāre, instead,just constantly playing v1 of decks and, to a degree, begin to not consider tech options as much as the changes just come in too quickly to justify counter-meta decks.
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So far DoD nerfs have seemed to be fairly decent, although Iāll be interested to see how Zoolock does with the Rites nerf as I think that one is actually th emost likely to cause an archetype issue.
Remember though Mothasaā¦ weāre not that far removed from Mage getting nuked by a nerf wave.
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Will there be any changes in wild format in the future?
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And yet, both nerfed cards (Galaxy and CC) are still in use. Though I do believe that Galaxy was overnerfed (I think that pros like Kibler and Kripp were correct in hypothesising that Blizzard didnāt want to risk making too tame a nerf after having buffed the card once), weāre still a far cry from, say, the Innervate, Charge and Warsong Commander nerfs.
Fair on those differences, but CC and Galaxy seeing play in tier-3ish decks because of a lack of better options is still thatā¦ perhaps an over nerf. It wasnāt Warsong Commander level of nuke, for certain, but if you were F2P and invested in Mage it was still a more significant impact than the Galak Shaman nerfs (round 1) and, it appears, the Galak Warrior nerfs (unsure on others atm).
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Have you tried Galak shaman? I think the deck is dead in less than a moth time. Unless it gets a new version somehow
Well said, agreed and nothing more to add except the fact that the community in these forums and reddit seem to be liking the whole āānerf every month thingāā.
Still its about the same community who about 1.5 year ago cried about the cost of the game on reddit and the same community that cries about the cost every day in these forums
So i really dont get what s happening and till the dust settles im gonna hide in my wild sanctuary
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āSo farā was referring to nerf wave #1. Wave #2 hasnāt had time to fully work itself out yet obviously
If stuff goes where it appears to beā¦ I can agree with this sentiment.
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Oh, on this I agree. Iām just saying that theyāve been getting better lately.
I think the changes have been well received, overpowered cards used to go untouched for months and would then be nerfed right before a new expansion release. This approach feels more proactive and should lead to a better experience for players between expansions.
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I appreciate the nerfs and especailly the feedback that the devs have been giving lately. All in all, I think Hearthstone is a great game and the meta is currently okay, compared to past metas at least, and this should be a welcome and healthy change.
However, what I do wish would be taken more seriously is the fact that power creep has been increasing at an accelerating rate lately. Iām sure your team has thought about this a lot, but I think when the best decks in wild are pretty much the exact same decks being played in standard (with just one or two cards changed), the power creep is really limiting design space for viable or even semi-viable decks.
As a player who thoroughly enjoys theorycraft and deck-building, Iāve been dissapointed in the escalating power of arbitrary synergies and new sets.
Obviously the benefits of this is that you get to keep people excited about new powerful cards and new archetypes and mechanics each expansion- but this also comes at a price.
The price is that players who donāt play very often get pushed out of the game almost entirely, and it sets an ever-rising barrier to entry for new players. Basic cards are almost to the point of being unplayable as standalone cards (Even the previously insane truesilver champion is in modern hearthstone a negative winrate card), and you canāt really stitch together any kind of home brew with any success like you could in the past. Additionally, existing as high concentrations of this power creep, legendaries are becoming far more prevalent and necessary to compete; which is bad news for the f2p and new player experience.
Itās a complicated issue, and I donāt really know how to solve it now that thereās so much interia in this direction already- I guess the only suggestion I can come up with would probably be one not well received by players- and thatās to probably make far, far more nerfs than are currently happening to get the game back in power check; and hearing that the dev team is already pretty hesitant even at the current rate is not a good sign of that being actualized. Itās just not a sustainable model in any card game, and some players love it, some players like myself and my friends detest it. You asked for feedback, I hope itās something worth considering.
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Not gonna lie.
I think that as community we have 2 main concerns that need to be addressed.
- Increased cost it will cause to keep up with the changes.
- People are already not figuring stuff and going ask for nerfs in the first loss.
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there should be reasonable thresholds for nerfs.
- If a deck has an overall win rate of e.g. 70% within 2 weeks of release, OR
- If a deck has a high win rate and 70% of winners use it for ladder easily (even if it doesnāt mean the deck has 70% win rate)
it says a lot about the obviously skewed card that players have quickly learnt to exploit. And the lack of balance because the strong cards have overpowered other cards, so other players donāt play other cards as often.
In such instances, kudos to the devs for taking proactive action to stop things from worsening.
The issue now is that the threshold is not made known to players, and this lack of an announced threshold leads to disputes from players who may not like to see their exploited cards being nerfed, as well as players who just want to argue for the sake of arguing.
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More changes, more often if possible. Thats exiting for everyone.
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