Unskilled players complaining about tier 3 decks

[ctberserker-1182]

Don’t think I would be trusting blizzard to be 100% reliable on knowing what to nerf and not to.

They have released things they killed the classic set which shouldn’t be touched or made the classic set way to strong for future things

[Gishgeron-1870]

The reason they hate mage is the same as ungoro quest rogue or naga. Doesn’t matter how low the win rate is. A loss where you have zero agency is bad as an experience and sticks around longer than one where you did.

[xlux-1360]

That isn’t what is happening with Mage. The matches are not polarized. Quest rogue was either completely unfavored, or completely favored. That is not the case with Mage.

[RandomDrunk-21679]

Big Priest falls into that category better, since it removed midrange decks from that format.
Mage is annoying, and a good bit highroll-y.

But an early giant does not influence winrate (in a polarizing way) nearly as much as coin Barnes.
Mage is not nearly influential enough, Imo.

[incaguard-2510]

Rank 20 is filled with tier 1 decks. Maybe you haven’t been there lately, but I have

[DSh-1654]

You have got your facts backwards.

ANY balance change is ultimately done to appease the player base. Thus ALL nerfs you found were done to appease the (not necessarily angry) player base.

Though you do raise the key issue namely

@xlux-1360

The playing experience of who exactly?

Arguably, the experience for as many players as possible. How do you do that? Observing balance as a better measurable criteria in the fact of not being able to directly measure player experience reliably. It is not that they do balance changes because balance in itself is good.

They do it because they cannot directly estimate player experience usually. Blizzard would disagree with “playing experience first”? That’s such a garbage statement. Imagine a dev coming out here and saying: “Playing experience is not our first priority.” People play games mostly because they like the experience, not because it is balanced. Then they would play tic tac toe.

There is also the misconception that any problem is easily solvable. Let’s take your Big Priest example:

• Do they even know if many people see Big Priest as a problem? Probably yes. But are there that many as it seems on forums?
• As you said other people playing Big Priest would likely not be as active in communicating. So maybe there are more people who like it than dislike it?
• Does deleting Big Priest improve player experience? People are usually good at pointing out issues, but usually solving them is not as simple as it may seem.
• I do think they should do something about it, but maybe they know more, or maybe they just work suboptimally in some cases?

If you are not convinced: Tell me why balance is good. Very curious here

Edit:
Also found an example here. Although it is not an example for a nerf you asked for but I guess that counts too

@Ravinix

How did you select the cards from each class to be buffed?

• We chose cards based on how fun or interesting we feel they are to play in relation to how much they are currently being utilized. In this case, the cards that were selected are part of the Rise of the Mechs event, which is specific to The Boomsday Project set. There were many cards that were played less than the cards we chose, but these are the ones that we believed led to the most fun experiences without making decks that are already very powerful even better.

[xlux-1360]

@DSh-1654

You have got your facts backwards.

ANY balance change is ultimately done to appease the player base. Thus ALL nerfs you found were done to appease the (not necessarily angry) player base.

Historically that’s not accurate. Like i’ve said multiple times, If you can locate a balance change that was made without a statistical reason behind it, then I will shut up. Until then, their focus suggested by their actions is that a balanced game is their priority.

You are putting the carriage before the horse. All balance changes are made to IMPROVE the game which THEN appeases the player base.

If you knew any researchers, you would know how tedious and difficult collecting peoples thoughts and opinions is. These forums are not a good source of that honestly, and I don’t recall blizzard doing any surveys or studies on what people think of their game. They balance the game based on the DATA.

@DSh-1654

Arguably, the experience for as many players as possible. How do you do that? Observing balance as a better measurable criteria in the fact of not being able to directly measure player experience reliably. It is not that they do balance changes because balance in itself is good.

They do it because they cannot directly estimate player experience usually. Blizzard would disagree with “playing experience first”? That’s such a garbage statement. Imagine a dev coming out here and saying: “Playing experience is not our first priority.” People play games mostly because they like the experience, not because it is balanced. Then they would play tic tac toe.

Ya… so we agree then? Player sentiment is an immeasurable metric without studies and surveys. Many players value a balanced game. Balance is a point of contention in literally every online game I’ve ever played, and its the only logical and fair way to make changes.

@DSh-1654

There is also the misconception that any problem is easily solvable. Let’s take your Big Priest example:

• Do they even know if many people see Big Priest as a problem? Probably yes. But are there that many as it seems on forums?
• As you said other people playing Big Priest would likely not be as active in communicating. So maybe there are more people who like it than dislike it?
• Does deleting Big Priest improve player experience? People are usually good at pointing out issues, but usually solving them is not as simple as it may seem.
• I do think they should do something about it, but maybe they know more, or maybe they just work suboptimally in some cases?

They nerfed Lackey rogue in under a month. Problems don’t seem that difficult to solve when you have 100% control of your game as the developer. Why did they do it? Did they come to the forums and say “Uh oh, people dont like Lackey rogue” … Hell no! They looked at the data and saw that it had 30% playrate, one counterplay option, and cards with 68%+ played winrate.

Maybe they just dont view Big priest as an issue? That seems to be the logical answer to me.

@DSh-1654

If you are not convinced: Tell me why balance is good. Very curious here

You honestly want me to explain why balance is good? You are not a very competitive person are you?

Integrity of competition, killing monotony and stagnation, having room and tools to be strategic? I’m sure there are more. It’s one of the biggest factors gamers care about.

I can’t believe someone is taking the stance that balance doesn’t matter lol.

[DSh-1654]

Yes, I do agree with many if not most things you said. But I don’t agree with your conclusion that Balance takes priority over playing experience.

@xlux-1360

You are putting the carriage before the horse. All balance changes are made to IMPROVE the game which THEN appeases the player base.

The conclusion here is that balance changes are done with the goal to appease the player base. That is NOT a side effect of improving the game. That’s the goal.

@xlux-1360

If you can locate a balance change that was made without a statistical reason behind it, then I will shut up.

Locating a balance change that was made without a statistical reason behind it does not prove anything in this discussion. Do you not agree that you use statistical reasoning to improve playing experience? And yes balance is a big part of it because it has those datas. Again the goal is to improve playing experience and usually of course better balancing does equal better playing experience. However, if those two goals disagree, playing experience does take precedence.

For that I found a balance change (after edit) now that explicitly put playing experience over balancing. On the other hand you will find no such statements where they explicitly stated that they put balance first although they believe it is detrimental to player experience.

@xlux-1360

Maybe they just dont view Big priest as an issue? That seems to be the logical answer to me.

Yes, I think so too. In my case my conclusion is: It is not a big enough issue concerning playing experience. This does not contradict that it might also not be an issue balance wise.

@xlux-1360

You honestly want me to explain why balance is good? You are not a very competitive person are you?

Integrity of competition, killing monotony and stagnation, having room and tools to be strategic? I’m sure there are more. It’s one of the biggest factors gamers care about.

I can’t believe someone is taking the stance that balance doesn’t matter lol.

Usually, when people tell me, you really want me to explain that. Really? Than they don’t have a good answer.

And all I see is you throwing around vague terms without providing a real answer. Because integrity of competition, killing monotony, and stagnation are not part of playing experience? Please answer that. Very curious again

Maybe that was not claer. I do not think balance doesn’t matter. Balance does matter because it affects playing experience. However, it does not matter on its own which you argue it does. So in conclusion should playing experience and balance conflict, playing experience takes priority.

Another important conclusion, is that player preferences are valid feedback.

Edit: I do not want you to shut up. I hoped to help your original post, where you want to know how it is possible to have a disparity between balance and playing experience where you indicate that they are the same. However, it is actually quite natural for balance and playing experience, i.e. facts and perception to be different and that actually perception is more important in this case. So a direct answer: Some player may be oblivious, but some people might also just think that Mage is a sucky playing experience to play against although it is “balanced”?

[VictoriousDN-1441]

Well, APXVoid finished rank 1 with a 70+% while playing Cyclone mage on stream. Maybe the players maintaining a tier 3 win rate with mage are the unskilled players.

[xlux-1360]

There is honestly just an incredible amount of semantics in all this. I honestly dont think we disagree on all that much, so I’m not going to continue answering point by point.

I’m just going to agree to disagree and hold by my opinion that their priority is to develop a good game first, that they had a vision when they made the game and they executed it, and there are standards such as “game balance” that they adhere too much more than player feedback.

Good discussion.

[Fame-1565]

Okay Blizzard shill. Show us the skill you have to remove a bunch of giant minions from the board on turn 5-6. Just pathetic.

[Shakou-2789]

@xlux-1360

Mage is arguably the most complained about thing on this forum right now… yet the recent VS report shows that their decks are tier 3 at every level of play.

What is it about certain decks that makes players hate them?

just like cthun, shudder etc… in the past, most players don’t play or play at terrible ranks, they don’t understand everything

[anon19241858]

The lackluster responses you get might be because you keep peddling opinion as fact. Somebody somewhere labeled conjurer mage as tier three, and you auto-thread about it.

As much as I hate the malevolence of the current meta, I must admit that the overuse of AI.RNG did motivate me to discover the meta quirks. I have watched the streamed competitions and sought information from diverse Hearthstone streamers. The variations on each deck is interesting, as well as how players give different prioritizations to tactics and cards. There is a twitch streamer named AsmodaiTV who was furiously playing to get rank 1 legend on May 31st. I stopped watching before the end of the season, but he was at rank 5 legend using conjurer mage.

TLDR: One or more people giving a deck a tier (x) label means nothing.

[Lykotic-11440]

@VictoriousDN-1441

Well, APXVoid finished rank 1 with a 70+% while playing Cyclone mage on stream. Maybe the players maintaining a tier 3 win rate with mage are the unskilled players.

I feel like most of the complaints are from the Book of Spectres version which is worse but hits high-roll more often.

@Fame-1565

Okay Blizzard shill. Show us the skill you have to remove a bunch of giant minions from the board on turn 5-6. Just pathetic

Why remove when you can just kill them instead =p

I’ll defend the OP here. Mage isn’t OP and is no more high-roll than Murloc Shaman. I think CC is too cheap personally but, for now, I prefer to see Mage across from me than I do Hunter.

[Gishgeron-1870]

@xlux-1360

That isn’t what is happening with Mage. The matches are not polarized. Quest rogue was either completely unfavored, or completely favored. That is not the case with Mage.

I just want to clarify. I didnt say polarized, and i didnt mean it either. When the mage high rolls, it tends to present an unwinnable situation (and it can go off early).

Lots of decks highroll. And plenty can answer what the mage does. But, often, those other highrolls leave you a few turns to pull out of it. Even a turn 3 massive edwin takes 3 hits to kill you.

The mages overwhelming field doesnt. And very few things can pull back from it once it happens. So even the players with outs can feel tilted because they didnt draw it.

The game just ended. Other things do it too…but say, Nomi, happens much later. The loss of agency always causes more rage.

[xlux-1360]

I love how you call 50,000 games of well-aggregated weekly data that isn’t subject to selection bias “one or more players giving a deck a tier” … While turning around and basing an entire argument on you watching ONE guys stream.

You can’t make this stuff up. Bravo

[anon19241858]

@xlux-1360

I love how you call 50,000 games … [insignificant] …

Good game design requires that game developers are able to select meaningful data for review. One rank 5 legendary player’s results is more meaningful than all the games played by rank 5 ladder players.

There are two bad ideas that bad game developers keep adhering to.

1. They mistake the top players as people most capable of suggesting the best ideas.

2. They assume that the cumulative results of all games played data to be equally relevant.

The best game designers are aware that the opposite of these two errors is true.

[Greymeir-1415]

Any “highroll” deck is always going to get extra hate. And that’s not really unreasonable, on one level - it doesn’t matter to your opponent that your deck struggles 4/5 times, if they have to face the match where you get the 1/5 perfect draw and they never have a chance.

[xlux-1360]

@anon19241858

Good game design requires that game developers are able to select meaningful data for review. One rank 5 legendary player’s results is more meaningful than all the games played by rank 5 ladder players.

I couldn’t disagree more

@anon19241858

There are two ideas that bad game developers keep doing.

1. They mistake the top players as people most capable of suggesting the best ideas.

Bi-polar much? So they should base their entire game off how the best players play it, but the best players shouldnt talk? What?

@anon19241858

2. They assume that the cumulative results of all games played data to be equally relevant.

The best game designers are aware that the opposite of these two errors is true.

Name one successful game designer that ignores making a good game for 99.9% of its player base and exclusively caters to the top 100 players.

Also, Brian Kibler got top 5 legend last season with Elemental mage… Alls that shows is that some players are incredibly good.

[DarkSeph-2174]

I play Mage and I definitely wouldn’t disagree Conjurers is terrible design. The high roll turn 5 Giant -> Coin -> Conjurer is extremely difficult to beat, as well as the Khadgar play. Unfortunately however Mage is indeed tier 3 and the class would crumble without Conjurer.

I would very happily trade it for some consistent early game, like a mage Duskbreaker or a Hellfire or something like that. Our early game is very weak in a rather tempo heavy meta.