I urge you all, before making these complaints about the state of the game to, for only a second, put our shoes in those that the devs wear.
Can anyone (open question) please explain how without powercreep (the new the expansion, the higher power levels), how would this company make money?
I have yet to see a single, reasonable propositional to reduce power levels across the board (thereby objectively reducing the value of cards owned by players (many of which they earned or purchased) rightfully so.
I have yet to see a compelling argument to support the above positions. Without increasing powerful level, what incentive do players have to purchase new card packs, bundles, and deals?
Mage is an excellent example of this because the class is perpetually in limbo. The playrate is always consistently high – winrate regardless. This is a problem in itself. It is that no matter the mage prowless, which is often weak, that it hardly affects this class playrate.
I asked this elsewhere. Do you of you have any suggestions as to how to make mage playrate reasonable, while also allowing for it to be competitive?
I am asking in the most sincere way I can here. Do any of you have any propositional to lower its playrate, while also maintaining one or more competitive decks?
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No. Power creep isn’t necessary to sell cards. In fact, I’d say they end up turning people away when the meta afterwards is infested with untested raw power cards.
A better idea, if they wanted to make less initial but more overall money, would be a subscription service that gave people the cards. Ditch lootbox pack mechanics altogether and make quests give people dust instead.
A subscription service means less stress on the designers to create new obnoxiously power creeped cards.
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There’s a really easy way, make new cards that replace the effects of the rotating cards, but are weaker or as powerful in another way. The idea that the devs have to keep power creeping and breaking the game to sell packs is complete garbage. If the quality of the game and playstyle is fun and interactive you don’t need game breaking cards to sell it. The current Team 5 has had more patches per expansion than any full year before they came in. A game with a standard rotating format shouldn’t have to constantly powercreep, and to top it off they powercreep a metric ton per expansion to blow every other expansion out of the water. It’s poor game design for short term pack sales.
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You post a lot of multi-paragraph length posts. Can you do a short one to alleviate my attention span?
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There is nothing. People are stuck in the mindset that this is an MMORPG game and don’t look at cards in a card game but look at it as Classes in an RPG. So these people get stuck in a specific class and spec. They are always going to try to force their Class and spec. These people are also closed to playing any other Class or spec. These people are never going to expand their scope outside the tiny Class/Spec box and play the card game.
Some classes are just going to be more popular not just because of mechanics, but theme and lore. You can’t change that with mechanics, really.
While I do think that a power level increase is inevitable every few years, which every card game has gone through, Hearthstone is a card game extremely vulnerable to such changes due to the team’s poor design vision. I’m going to say it again, a diverse amount of secrets should be given to every class, and they should stop printing big high roll minions or flashy spells that you cannot counterplay without a lucky topdeck. I can remember a million times where I would have won if I draw my overpowered removal against big decks, or my overpowered big finisher against control decks. You can make cards strong without making cards that are literally “You have a 50% chance to win or lose when you play this.” (Which many Mage cards, by coincidence somehow, literally are, maybe that’s not a good class theme to focus on, just saying)
To answer the question: How do you make people buy packs? Mechanical themes that are flavorful and interesting, but not necessarily overpowered. For example: New card types or new strategies. Maybe a land card type or mercenary cards (kinda like MTG Planeswalkers if you know what I’m talking about). People that are playing just to win are probably not going to spend much anyways, since the most competitive deck currently (Aggro Taunt Druid) is far from the most expensive one. And I’d argue it is not very consumer friendly to overly monetize gameplay through power-creeping in a digital card game where you can’t trade, and team 5 should focus more on cosmetics instead.
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I’d quit forever if they did this.
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This is badly phrased. Powercreep is the natural progression of card game design. However, the quantity and extend of it is usually the topic in question.
I use a few examples,
- Irondeep Trogg, where 1mana 1/2 is normal stat but why we get players complain about it? By the same application, then it is fair design as company needs to make money?
- Launched DH’s design, where the set has numerous cards performing beyond what other class could not. Again by the same application…
HS being design as a F2P dCCG must balance between cardpack sale and sustainability. Relying just on powercreeping cards can ensure sales, but creates more design frustrations as more expansions get added.
Developer’s focus on better bundles, and other gimmicks that ensures better purchase value should be the priority in terms of sales.
I’m fine with powercreep.
I’m not fine when the only new thing that is playable is a powercrept version of an old card.
I want to play a fresh game with new combination of cards/archetype; if I want to play something already seen, I go to wild.
Kazakusan is a new concept, that’s why I like it, even if it may be unbalanced, it’s unbalanced in a new and interesting way.
If every new expansion had a new archetype/card like kazakusan for every class, I think the meta will be always new and my wild collection would be more useful
Isn’t the entire point of rotation to prevent power creep? Not saying I could do a better job designing cards, but that’s also because it’s not my job and don’t get paid to do it. In all honesty I only play wild though so my balance expectations are pretty low. That being said lately I’ve barely been able to finish a game without wanting to close it out mid Match whether I’m winning or losing.