Should Blizzard increase the turn length limit?

Multiplayer Discussion
1

Ever since the quest lines were introduced, I’ve had a handful of games where I literally could not make all the moves I wanted in the time given. I am curious if anyone else is running into this.

It seems the worst scenarios are those in which I complete one or more parts of the questline, as the animations for their completion tend to take quite a while to play out.

Sometimes you can queue up moves, but in the case of discover cards, for instance, it can get very frustrating, since you can’t pick a discovered card until the choices are shown.

It seems like a good solution would be an increase in the maximum turn length, possibly even pausing the timer during animations to lower user frustration.

Thoughts?

1 Like
2

I think that in the case you are describing, the turn length and the animation times serve an important purpose. If you can’t queue all the actions that you want into 90 seconds, then you shouldn’t be able to take all of those actions. It’s a hardwired limit on the shenanigans that any given deck can employ.

6 Likes
3

I like it even with animations all together. Turn limit is fine what you probably need to improve is apm handling and this takes knowledge and time, planning ahead etc., and some ppl can’t handle.

1 Like
4

Sorry but…

The way you’re describing makes It feel like they build the animations trying to limit what people can play or not and that is Just wrong because:

  1. There are millions of card combinations to play.

  2. You have to take into account time for players to think.

  3. The game don’t used to want us to play that many cards in a single turn or to play as much animations as nowadays by consequence.
    And If we need to play more cards we need more time because this is a turn based game and not an FPS.

1 Like
5

If anything the turns should be shorter.

3 Likes
6

Yes absolutely. Long animations limit the amount of things you can do in a turn. This was a big factor in limiting the power of D6 warlock for instance. I’m sure they do it on purpose.

You don’t have to take all combinations into account. You just have to know that a card can enable turns with too many actions in them and then limit the power of that card by adding in a lengthy animation.

The game gives players time to think, but it limits that time. This is just another form of limitation, which also attempts to limit the amount of actions a player can take per round. It’s intentional. Higher animation times help balance cards.

2 Likes
7

LUL

Someone really thinks that they put card animation lenght based on “game balancing”. Now i really did see everything in this game.

Not trying to make joke of It but It is Just unrealistic to even consider It by both a design and development standpoint.

No one is really going there and saying that the animation of a card has to be X seconds so you can’t play that other stuff.
They Just give It animation and adjust accordingly to what feels good to watch and not stop the game to feel fluid.

Combos that reach the timer are literal coincidence and Just the fact that they exist it’s alarming about either the timer being too long or a deck being really of normal design.

The entire Idea of need to use the turn timer to balance something is awful.

8

No.

Ropers are bad enough as is.

2 Likes
9

No they do not need to increase turn length. Too many people abuse it as bm as it is. Just speed up animations and cut them off completely when the rope ends.

2 Likes
10

It absolutely affects game balancing. There have been multiple decks in hearthstone’s history that have required a very high apm. D6 warlock, and to a lesser extent Anacondra druid and garotte rogue are recent examples in standard. APM mage is a recent example in wild. Boar OTK priest was a prime example of this back in the day. Animation times and the turn limit are part of what keeps those decks in check. The ability to work around these restrictions is part of the skill expression of these decks.

It’s completely realistic to consider it as a design parameter. I don’t know why you find it so unbelievable. If play testing indicates that a card is used in a strong deck that requires a huge amount of actions per round, the animation length can be adjusted to help deal with that. The turn length prevent scertain combos and certain deck types from being overpowered. In a world where mana cheats, cheap draws, discover cards, and powerful combos are common, physical limits are necessary (though currently not sufficient) to keep these cards in check.

11

Delusional.

Those situations happen so little that when they happen you deal with they rather than Prevent.

It’s cheaper and Just as good.

12

I would prefer shorter times, less animations, and a bigger move history. some games drag on long enough.

1 Like
13

There have been multiple such decks in the recent past. They’re not that uncommon, and you can usually see them a mile away.

It doesn’t take much deep thought to understand that releasing sanctum chandler and ignite would lead to a OTK combo (especially in wild). The combination of stealer of souls with the warlock questline and a heavy draw engine surprised no one. Those synergies are there by design.

Animations and animation time aren’t determined by divine fiat. They’re part of the design of the card. Someone chooses that animation, and since the animation affects how the card is played out, it’s not entirely an artistic decision. Faster animations for ignite and chandler’s draw would make that deck stronger. Slower animations times for stealer of soul’s abilities and the warlock quest line reward would have made that deck weaker.

Animation time has been adjusted many times in Hearthstone’s past. Some cards have had their animation time adjusted multiple times. Spreading plague’s animation was sped up and then slowed back down again.

I’m not sure why you think that a design choice that influences the power level of a card and has historically been adjusted multiple times in Hearthstone’s history is completely off limits as a parameter when designing cards. Maybe it’s because I’m delusional.

14

It was choice to make those otk happen.

This is the point.Unless you literally break the game (and i not talking of balance here).
Most stuff is fine.

15

The thing though is it extends into battlegrounds a fair bit. Although the leapfrogger build has mostly dropped from meta ever since the nerf, you can still run in situations where just a middling player trying to make or salvage some top 3-6 will find a golden baron + double leapfrogger combo on occasion laggy enough to get more parts of combo with less people going for it, and then potentially lag you enough to entirely skip their and their opponent’s turn, just from animation times as well.

Battlegrounds is known to be a hands off mode, but many builds are still limited by gold and yet comps that feature longer animation times aren’t at all in the opponent’s control.

Sure you might argue ‘animation times patch infinite loops’ in a digital card game, But should infinite interactions be in place to begin with anyways?

Take snip snap warlock, there was a infinite loop. What did blizzard do? They just added “but not less than 1”

Ditto with Summoning portal + knife juggler + Anything + brewmaster Reducing to 0. What did they do? Just put “but not less than 1” on the card.

However, in bgs where someone can lag you out of the game, not entirely by your choice, but just a really crappy comp. (Leapfrogger matches already stretched the turn timer, and although rare it’s still quite possible to near skip a turn on default 30 fps settings), it’s not uncommon for even just mundane abilities and trading at like 3 seconds per common attack to eat up a turn of like 7 attacks. And yet often when you go to twitch, the animations of streamers are faster. Since they set hearthstone to 60 fps for better streaming.

And for some unknown arcane reason, setting their fps to 60 makes the game run faster and lag less and play smoother and better and offer more time to think.

Now some might argue that the game should be locked to 30 fps, but then people would complain the animation takes too long, the streamer doesn’t have enough time to interact with stream. Any streamer not setting their fps higher likely might have a frustrated audience who don’t get to comment on any plays they want to make or buys they think would be good. The person would be fighting laggy animations, get their turn skipped to a guy suiciding bots or some twitch overlay lagging out of the game, and it’s just a weird mess. And then you realize something.

On the default settings, 5-10 seconds can be spent making choices in bob’s tavern laggy turns before it times out with 6/10 gold left while the apm pirate knocks you out of the game, 60-70 seconds are spent watching slow animations.

But when the streamers play, they get like 30 seconds of animations vs 60-70 on default 30 fps, higher frames per second, game runs smoother, and then they get 30 seconds of choices to 30 seconds of animation.

What sounds better, a game letting you interact with it 50% of the time, or only 10% of the time while the other 90% is animations?

It just seems so bizzare to me that blizzard would ‘balance’ a game around trying to force animation time as a restriction while frusterating streamers and actual players enough to the point the game seems ‘unplayable’ since the animation lag meant to ‘balance’ the game makes it feel like their game is almost entirely laggy, choppy, and unplayable while someone else in the distance sets up apm pirates and apm murlocs and apm elementals.

Sure it makes sense for ignite, but why on earth does battlegrounds need lag?

Why does Rat king need lag? Why does a mode that builds all it’s scaling off apm need lag?

Why does golden baron leapfrogger lag still need to be able to sometimes skip your next turn for no apparent good reason just since you had the misfortune of quing into them, and whoopsie, you lagged through your turn and just lost your mirror to the other guy with the same comp, but you got leapfroggered with 6/10 gold and no decision time, and the other dude got 5 demon eats and dealt 10-20 damage, It can make a difference.

I’m not saying that having no limits for ignite could be safe, just it boggles my mind. Designing animation blocks first, instead of gameplay first or balancing the card. It just makes no sense at all.

I’m not saying they couldn’t have found a way to do it worse, (that’s a bet to always lose), or that it serves okay, But it’s like the equivilent of arguing old control warriors roping was a ‘viable and balanced playstyle’ since ‘mobile players are more likely to play aggro on a phone’, and ergo, it helped beat aggro better. The game shouldn’t be designed about making animations take so long manually that they rope.

I always thought a big complaint with shudderwock’s original 40 minute animations wasn’t that he eventually killed you like a leeroy or FON + Roar combo… But that it took 5 centuries to die and the battlecries would still be going off and roping you for 40 minutes before you died.

16

It’s a choice to make the OTK happen, but it’s also a choice to determine its power level and consistency. An ignite with no animation time is overpowered. An ignite with a 5 second animation time is bad.

Most things are fine because thought goes into them before they’re released to you. Between the design of the card and its release there are multiple stages of iteration and quality control. One of them is bound to be an adjustment of animation times. It doesn’t take extra work to do it, it’s part of the standard process.

I don’t think that animation time is a primary source of balance, but it does help some of the time. Some decks just have too much potential for silly turns, and a physical limitation helps with that to some degree.

Animations is merely an artistic choice when it applies to priest’s quest line reward, but it’s a big deal when it applies to warlock. It’s part of the conversation, though as you say it can’t be the whole thing.

I honestly don’t know much about battlegrounds and about the limitations they put in place there. It sounds like it’s very frustrating situation from the way you describe it. I think it’s a necessary evil in other modes though.

17

It’s powerlevel isn’t determined by How many you have time to cast.

It’s determined by what win against It.

18

This is manifestly untrue. There are multiple decks whose power level is based on their ability to take many actions and make many decisions in one turn. That’s part of what determines what they win against and what they lose against.

D6’s power level came from their ability to draw most of their deck, complete nearly all of their quest, cast their quest reward, and get lethal damage (or set up a next turn lethal by clearing the board) in a single turn. It played well over half of its deck in that turn. It required multiple snap decisions based off of incomplete information, and it required very fast play. Time limits were definitely keeping that deck in check. It would have been so much easier to pull off without them and it would have allowed for much better turns.

Various versions of celestial alignment druid end up playing more than half of their deck in a turn. C’thun alignment druid was a particularly clear case of this. The animation times on druid cards play an important role in determining just how much you can do in a single turn, which is important to that deck.

Garotte rogue often has very involved field contact turns with many cards being played and many actions being taken. A previous version of that deck that ran auctioneer had even more involved turns. Their power level was based off of their ability to have turns like that. Faster animation times would give them more options. They could play more cards and make more decisions. Slower animation times would make those decks weaker.

Ignite mage’s power comes from the ability to cast a lethal amount of ignites in a single turn, drawn off the sanctum chandler. The more ignites they can cast, the more powerful the deck is. A slower animation would lead to less ignites would lead to more counterplay. Other versions of apm mage in wild are similar. In Flamewaker mage you have one turn to play dozens of cards. You definitely run into the time limit and the animation limit there.

There’s no lack of examples. Quest mage has turns like this. The miracle priest some masochists are running in standard does. Questline demon hunter (especially the version with the brutes and the weapon) does. The old charging boar combo priest was entirely based off of it.

Some decks have the ability to cast an obscene amounts of cards in a single turn and make a ridiculous amount of choices in a turn. Their power level is determined by their ability to do so. Quite often, mana and cards in hand aren’t the limiting factor. Time is. For those decks, more actions means a higher power level. Less actions means a lower power level.

19

You can do as much actions as you want in afterlife you still dead.

20

I don’t know if you’ve ever watched the show Adventure Time. The show takes place in a fictional world where there are all sorts of whimsical kingdoms. There’s a candy kingdom, a slime kingdom, etc.

In one episode, the protagonist comes to a place where cats wearing cardboard boxes live in a medieval style town complete with a castle and jousting grounds. He helps the cat that he thinks is the usurped prince reclaim his throne from a cat he thinks is a pretender. At some point the whole thing degenerates into chaos, the narrative he used to understand what was going on collapses, and the protagonist wonders out loud - “Is this even a kingdom?”

I’m finding myself pondering a similar question here.

The point is that for some decks, if you can take as many actions as you want, then the opponent will be dead.