I agree with this, actually. The issue isn’t cards costing zero. It’s sometimes perfectly fine.
For example: Kalecgos gives you a free spell. That was never game breaking.
I think it’s just an effect that Blizzard needs to be extra careful with so that it doesn’t reliably cause blowout games.
Cards like flash of lightning should probably have the not less than 1 restrictions though.
There are many contexts where reducing cards to 0 cost is not a problem when you have to still spend resources to achieve it. Prep is an example of this. Cards are resources themselves that you can run out of. Rogues sometimes can play 15 cards in a turn and then concede. The entire rogue identity in fact revolves around this kind of playstyle, there’s nothing inherently wrong with it.
And outside of rogue, well done mana cheat requires prior investment. You may spend X amount of mana in a do-nothing turn to then have that same X mana you banked previously on a mana cheat turn. Some players just think this came out of nowhere and don’t realize that play required an earlier investment. And this can go down to 0, no problem with that. For sure mana cheating is a potentially problematic mechanic that needs to be balanced carefully, but just a blanket ‘no less than 1’ restriction is neither good nor necessary to balance it. It’s the kind of nonesense Zeddy says all the time and I wish we could move past this discussion.
Edit: in any case, let’s agree to disagree, I wouldn’t want to derail the thread in the end!
Yeah, too many patches in a row they echo the exact wording we use here
Granted, the topic about player agency was created by someone who saw that on reddit, so the point still stands they might have caught it all on reddit, instead of here
I don’t use reddit or twitter or whatever that’s called now, but it’s reasonable to believe that same things are posted here and there.
The one card that single handedly shuts down decks that try to play the game? And shuts down highlander cards with just one more plague shuffled in? The card that basically says “go ahead, draw your cards. And die.”
Helya (and plagues in general) has single-handedly made this game at least x3 times more unfun that it would have been without it existing. And to be quite honest, whoever designed it should really reflect on their design philosophy. Even if only they redesigned frost plagues it would have been fine, they are some of the worst things to ever be put into this game in its entire history.
shutting down what the decks focused on plagues suck thats why they only get wins vs few decks
i dont think you can lose vs this deck unless you play warrior
They kind of put themselves in a corner when they left Plague as the only counter to Highlander. It’s not really a shocker that Plagues will rotate with Highlander next year.
I dont think a balance change will do much for BG. It will remain bad this patch.
Agency is more then removing “i win” cards. It is about having a wide range of playable cards to choose from. In the case of BG this means a shop in which many cards are worth considering. Thats the agency that is lacking in BG currently. You need to get lucky because the options you get if you dont get lucky are way to bad.
An actually human message from Blizzard Entertainment.
Where is the gamemasterGPT response one gets in tickets. This message is actually human. Perhaps the future isn’t that bad.
the list of BG changes is so massive how can you predict what will it do ? they didnt reveal ehe changes yet
Imagine how out of touch one needs be for this to happen.
Not 1, but multiple cards are gonna get nerfed because they are sentiment outliers. Hell, the meta as a whole can be classified as a sentiment outlier, and it’s getting nerfed just for that.
Imagine the game state, lol.
We’ll see if this does, anything.
It’s probably going to take a few waves of changes to get this right. The game has been balanced around ultra efficient removals, and OTK style plays for a while.
There’s a ton of stuff in the game that would be really strong if not for things like that making them a waste of time, and we are going to learn what those are shortly.
… and this assumes that the nerfs actually kills these decks rather than just bump them back a few turns.
I agree, but I think plagues are in a perfect spot.
They tank a couple of things hard, but get steamrolled by most everything else. That’s the prime space for a deck like plagues.
The only people who complain are people playing (1) toxic otk that tries to draw their whole deck and (2) snooze fest highlander value decks that are also toxic, imo.
Everyone else pretty much dunks on plague dk.
No kidding! I have never seen this many cards adjusted in a single patch, ever. The infographic hurts my eyes. It looks like they are trying to give some help to undead but ya, no idea what BG is going to look like after this patch.
Should Wheel of Death be nerfed? I want to be convinced, but playing the deck, Wheel’s usually not the win condition.
Cant wait for warrior to get nerfed so we stop seeing it every other game. I am so tired of playing 30 minutes vs a warrior win or lose, most of the time lose.
Sure…
I’m believe that we gonna really see a set of nerfs coerent with the argument used this time for some reason and that probably means a Ton of cards that aren’t even that relevant Will be nerf.
Hell, plague DK is my highlander DH’s best matchup right now, lol…
Mostly because Kurt and Reno aren’t how you beat that deck and aren’t win cons being turned off by plagues.
But I get the sentiment against it.
I do agree that plagues aren’t particularly strong, but that could change in a massively nerfed environment.
plagues was so bad nobody bothered trying that deck until HL cards were added
we had many people complaining bout the plagues being bad or"bugged" because their opponent never drew one of the 10 the plagues they shuffled
if the HL decks get hit by the nerfs plagues deck playrate will drop drastically without a single nerf to their deck
Something i’m need to point is that the text is cool and ALL but…
I’m fear the possibility that blizzard could not be on the same page as players when using some terms and that could be really bad.
For example:
Player agency
They could mean either making sure that competitive decks have meaningfull decision making OR they could mean simply Toning down RNG and by consequence stuff like plague DK.
And It applies for a decent amount of things said so after a second read of this text i’m think that while this could mean something really good the text itself is a gigantic nothing burger that can be understood as whatever you want.
Like horoscope.