It’s not easy to express the exact issue but i gonna try to put it in one phrase to make it clear.
There is a really reduced number of competitive viable archtypes being printed.
There aren’t enough competitive archtype being printed in the same class.
And i not even talking about this expansion but about around the last 1 year.
New cards enter. They usually feed the same decks and classes have to pass around 6 months to 1 entire year with the same strategies but updated with 1/2 new cards.
And when that don’t work we get things like warrior being out of the meta for months and people refusing to play paladin and Warlock even when they’re decent out of boredom.
And when you criticize that there is always that one person talking about powercreep who don’t perceive that the powercreep is going on regardless of that.
So if we are going that way we should atleast have also the good side of it.
Because we aren’t.
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Its been braindead since 2018 or something. You noticed just now?
Hearthstone is a simple, boring game. Whenever I am playing any game mode I must do something else because this game doesn’t keep my attention. Its been this way for years.
If you want an interesting game, go play something else. I do. I play other games while i play hearthstone.
It not used to be this way.
Not saying that it wasn’t simple.
But that there used to be variety with a decent bunch of New archtypes coming into viability every expansion even if usually pushing some out.
Situations were you had to think on the fly.
The challenge wasn’t do something incredible dificult but to Guide yourself in situations were the outcome was just impossible to predict.
Nowadays devs have fear of print cards and decks that challenge what people know about this game.
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this is a good observation. is the change, the devs response to complaints about not supporting existing archetypes?? that complaint has been floated on these forums for awhile. maybe they are incapable of supporting existing archetypes, AND providing variety.
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This is a good interpretation of this.
So maybe we should ask blizzard to waste less time and expansion slots with memes?
IDK what you think about it but if something isn’t supposed to be viable maybe they should not give 3/4 slots of a same class cards to that strategy.
I think that would atleast help.
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yep, this has always been confusing to me. why let memes be viable win cons with RNG?? also when it becomes as consistent as we’ve seen in the past, especially with small card pools, is it still random? wish i had a window into the game design sessions sometimes.
Well.
I think i can answer this and the answer is that it isn’t Black or white.
Decks with tons of RNG can in many times be some of the most engaging decks and take a ton of effort from who plays.
But design like that isn’t something easy to do and even when well done the player has to be more open minded to see.
That because it requires people to understand the effort of the person on the other side to find a Win condition in the middle of the mess of random cards.
If i had to choice one deck that fill that criteria it would be cyclone mage that is a deck who showcases cards like mana cyclone and evocation.
It also perfectly showcases how that idea that “discover is the healthier way to generate cards” is false.
And here we aren’t talking about generate 1/2 cards. But about MASS card generation with many cases could exceed even the number of cards in the decklist.
There are only two or three types of decks in the meta right now.
–Aggressive decks play a bunch of tokens and go wide early, then buff the board to the heavens. Alternately they hit you with a swing turn with stats so massive and ahead of the curve it’s dumb, or they OTK you from hand. That’d be enrage warrior, totem shaman, unholy DK, undead priest, and paladin mainly, with hunter also kinda doing that.
–Then you have the “Big” decks that cheat too many stats out ahead of curve. That’s mostly the undead thaddius flesh behemoth decks, of which druid and warlock are the main offenders, but paladin also has a big deck and hunter also cheeses big nonsense around turn 7 or 8. Eight king krushes in a single game? Yup, seen it. Demon hunter also has one of these decks getting inquisitors and crap out on 5 and 6.
–Then you have control priest and triple blood. Nothing needs to be said about their playstyles. We all know how they work by now.
Burn decks have mostly disappeared, mainly because of stuff like hunter getting hound and the format generally having more life gain. You either blow your opponent out in an instant or get smashed in turn. There really is very little else going on.
Then you have the classes that can’t really do any of those things anymore. Do rogue and mage still exist? I’ve seen so few of them lately I forgot they were still in the game.
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Your description of the actual meta is correct.
With that said:
Can you notice that the classes you said that are missing are also classes that devs refused/failed to push enough updates to old decks ?
For mage for example:
Rewind really needs to cost 2?
It’s not a flexible card because having to play a card before you can get a new copy of it isn’t easy to deal with during a match.
You really can’t put it together with shadow visions and other discover effects that cost 2 mana that can discover cards you gonna need going foward in the game.
I can concede that a small pool is good for discovering cards but i can also tell that it isn’t everything.
I agree, 3 mana sounds more reasonable.
And this is why the game can’t be good and fun.
People let their pet peeves get over what balancing the game should be like.
Hello pot, names kettle, have we met?
Everyone can have some bias at some point but there is a difference between try and failing to see something to suggest something you know that is wrong but do anyway because you don’t like a card.
You did the second.
I made a joke. I don’t care about the balance of mage cards, but you made an open ended suggestion, and I took the cue to crack a joke.
Because thats all balance in HS is anyway: a joke.
Rewind is fine at 2 mana. Compare it’s effect to shadow visions and it’s basically the same card. Rewind at 2 is not the reason mage is struggling right now. Three mana would be too much I agree, but I also think 1 mana is too little. It’s a powerful effect that has seen play in many decks before. Thrive in shadows also costs 2 mana for reference, and sees similar amounts of play in standard as shadow visions (still to this day) does in wild.
Okay.
Maybe i did go a little too hard too.
It’s kinda dificult to get sarcasm via text sometimes.
The point of shadow visions and thrive in shadows is that they increase your deck consistency and only get better as the game goes on.
Having to play the card before ruins you trying to get your deck more consistent and this specfic condition makes the pool get worse as the game goes on.
If rewind really was as good as those cards it would be seeing play in almost any deck.
Only for some classes.
Some classes keep jumping in and out of archetypes. Others just keep getting better sinergy cards all year round
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Enrage warrior is not an aggro deck by any stretch of the imagination. It’s more akin to be a combo deck. But of course it’s more flexible in it’s game plan and that’s how makes the deck challenging to play qnd also very fun.
And yes rogue exists and do go miracle rogue is very good.
I’m pretty sure it’s been longer than that.
Might even argue it’s always been this way.
Like… hunters have always been this aggro/face/tempo class. With beast flavor. Right now they have some big beast to play with too but back in the day highmane was considered a big beast.
I think what makes people call it boring though is that it seems like “surprise” plays happen less often.
In the old days maybe 90% of the time it’s the usual meta stuff happening.
Now it’s like 99% the same thing.
And even that 1% isn’t so interesting anymore, since it’s likely some huge RNG BS out of left field to overcome the raw power that is the 99% of the meta regular cards/combos.
Like old RNG is like winning a brawl or ragnaros hitting the right target, and that could be enough to flip a game. Today brawl isn’t so good anymore, so you need power creeped RNG like blood DK discovering The Scourge and a dozen board clears/heals.