From my experience, I think these 3 are top main problematic mechanics.
Discover - It can generate a card from thin air, which can be chosen to match the current situation, or even turn the table around. Theoritically, the process may continue recursively as a player is allowed to pick another Discover card, and then find another Discover card, and so on. This really causes a problem of value. While the opponent spend their resources on pressuring, a player could just find a solution after another solution. Some cards are broken on its own and does not need any luck to continue the vicious cycle, such as Infinitize the Maxitude.
Battlecry - Unlike other collectible card games, Hearthstone has a limitation by design that a player could not interact intentionally on the opponent’s turn. Whatever the opponent does in their turn is always unstoppable. The closest things that could counter those actions are Secrets, like Counter Spell or Objection. Even these 2 Secrets are strong, they are not a targetable spell, which means that the opponent could nullified its effect if they play smart enough. All these limitations allow the unstoppable rise of strong Battlecry cards like Tess, Brann, or Boomboss. Sadly, the only thing that could counter Battlecry mechanic in this game is Dirty Rat, and it is not even effective.
Zero Mana Card - Mana cost reduction is another absurd mechanic. No one is able to stop it as the process usually happens on the opponent’s turn. Mage could reduces the mana cost of their spells to 0 and OTK anyone by firing spells from their hand. Marin the Fox can also cheat mana cost up to 30 mana maximum. The new expansion to come also allows Druid to shoot 0-mana spells for more than 10 times in one turn. When a situation like this happens, what could a player do to protect themselves ?
There was nothing wrong with discover back when it costed something. It became a problem when it became a free addon that got slapped on everything. They either need to make Discover cost something again or make it way less frequent. Like instead of having 20 cards with free discover slapped on make it only 1 card with discover in a set.
All you said is true but why would the way you idealize be “the way the game should be”?
Let’s talk about infinitize the maxitude for example.
While it in fact has infinite value. Have you tried to play the game always discovering the cards at the end of the turn yet?
You have to play almost on prediction mode and that is a very big thing.
Hearthstone is a game who is best played when blizzard creates stuff like this.
You literally crush an old paradigma and twist it in a way that you have to learn new things.
This is why hearthstone is fun and what it does best. We 100% get some problems for this but it is better than turn the game into a generic game.
i’m getting owned by reno druids and reno shudderwock shaman in wild tonight… depressing… just the latest game possible built enemy decks, with marin, reno lone ranger, reno jackson, zilliax 3000, zephrys, shudderwock and grumble worldshaker and golganneth or rheastrasza and eonar, why am i torturing myself by playing bad decks and this game against strong decks…
It boils down to “resources don’t matter”, whether the resource is mana, life, cards, etc. For certain classes, anyway (looking at you, druid and rogue).
I’m not a fan of the direction the dev team has been taking Standard (essentially turning into another Wild). I don’t believe there’s any going back to a more sober game design, either. Balance between classes will become ever harder to achieve, and more games will be decided in the mulligan, or even in the queue; there’ll be less back-and-forth, fewer meaningful decisions, and ultimately more frustration for players who decline to play the busted classes and decks.
I’m unsure what the connection is between battlecry and not being able to take actions as the non-turn player. The issue itself isn’t battlecries.
Not a unique issue to HS. Free cards always get broken one way or another in any card game. I don’t think I can even name a card game where free cards haven’t created issues. Maybe L5R since that game had a fairly limited card pool but I am sure with enough development it probably would have eventually been an issue.
If it were MTG, strong cards like Brann, Boomboss, Tess would not be much of a thing as they can always be nullified by Counter Spell, even when these cards are played on the opponent turn.
Since Hearthstone do not have such mechanic and rule set, the only way to keep Battlecry cards in control is not to make them too strong from the beginning.
Difference is in MTG boomboss would be like a 5 mana 4/4 “at the end of your endstep your opponent will…something similar to bombs, mill, discard, sac creature or whatnot” and would get played by green turn 3 because ramp and mana dorks are funny cards.
There is even a similar card with Crabomination but its in black and a little trickier to cheat out.
Huge difference being that in MTG the creatures dont have insane stats making them susceptible to the removal existing in the game. Creatures dont have to be a 4 mana 14/14 taunt/rush/elusive/reborn to be threatening. There are 3 mana 2/3 creatures that are scary just by being on the board. But then MTG has stuff like ward, hexprood and such instead. At least reach isnt “hidden” anymore
Is it now? Guess thats why handbuff paladin is such a bad deck. Like the handbuff double zilliax thats going to hit you.for 36 damage next turn after handbuffs.
As someone that was at The Day of Thunder and was playing for Junzo. I can tell you with 100% certainty that even L5R had it’s issues with free cards that should never have cost nothing in the early days.
That changed dramatically once they started having cycles. The only cards that were allowed to be “free” had corruption attached to them.
It’s unfortunate that HS went so far down the rabbit hole of discount on cards but it’s a mechanism to make money. Their competitors started doing it and it made them loads of money so their hand was forced to adapt and accept it.
Hundred percent agree with this and I’ve discussed this in the context of the difference between today’s Hearthstone and Hearthstone in it’s golden age peak (most people pin this somewhere around the frozen throne expansion.)
Current design is to create bottle necks in the game based around tempo. For all intents and purposes tempo is the only thing that matters, all types of decks have access to nearly infinite resources in one way or another.
Peak Hearthstone philosophy on game design was that everything was a limited resource, and bidding your time and counting cards actually mattered. So did gambits and bluffs. Effectively the space of available tactics to both players back then was immeasurably larger than it is today, where everything is projected onto one dimension: tempo.
The best analogy of this I can think of is,
Imagine Hearthstone as a game where each player has a water hose they use to attack the other player. Peak Hearthstone there was a limited amount of water you could use (resources), as well as stream strength (tempo).
Current day Hearthstone, everyone has an infinite water supply and the only difference between decks is the stream strengths.
I played L5R with the Ivory Edition reset and the game had cheap cards but I don’t specifically recall anything being abused for being free.
Might be a lapse in memory but if you have anything post IE in mind let me know. I can’t really speak on the first iteration of the game. The history and lore behind anything pre IE is beyond me.
The main cause of resource problem is a card that could generate more cards of thin air like Discover, some Hunter cards, some Druid cards, and many more.
