Is this patch bad? Feels like any other to me, really.
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Its about more then just balance alone.
Its also the design philosophy , what sort of game do they want.
Fast games or longer games. Otk or no otk. Solitaire combo or not solitaire combo. Lots of highroll rng or only a little bit of highroll rng.
“bad feelings” come from not only imbalances but also players not beeing satisfied with the overall direction of the gameplay,not beeing happy with the design philosophy.
But its true,the best games dont come from listening to players. They come from developpers beeing genious and creating something amazing.
If this patch is bad i would not know tbh,and i also would not know how much blizzard was influenced by social media when chosing their nerfs. Probably not all that much i would think but maybe i am wrong.
The moment they start listening directly to their customers then something is wrong. Then it shows they dont have an awesome vision themselves and only try please customers.
This might seem like a sensible aproach for any business but in the gaming world this all to often leads to very mediocre games that dont have lasting apeal.
Games have to be innovative. And customer feedback is not suited for that.
Customers rarely think of something new. They can tell you what they dont like in an existing product but they cant tell you what they would like from a product that noone even has thought of. They dont even know what new things they will like and what they wont like. They will only know after they tried it.
To be innovative you need a creative develloper who thinks of something new. And then the customers either like it and its a succes or they dont and it flops after which they try again.
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Hey man, no reason to get mad at the people participating in the discussion you started - Blizzard are the ones making the decisions you disagree with.
All I’m saying is that I think the devs are doing the right thing in considering player feedback when making development decisions, and I disagree that a patch is bad simply because it is primarily informed by player feedback. From my perspective (as a wild player) this was a good patch - two cards I use were nerfed (Caria and Cariel) but they did often feel unfair to me and I agree with the changes. And the nerfs to Earthen Scales and Lightning Bloom were much appreciated because they played a key role in a few decks with play patterns that I very much did not enjoy.
We have this argument every time Blizzard makes changes, and you keep acting like you know better than the devs… if only they listened to you and ignored everyone else on this forum the game would be perfect… but sometimes you just need to have faith that the professional game designers and developers at Blizzard know what they are doing, and the most useful thing we as a community can do is help them understand what we as individual players do/don’t like. If you don’t like the meta tell them that, and go into detail as to why - that’s useful. But telling Blizzard that they are bad at their job because they care what their community thinks doesn’t seem very constructive to me, nor does telling players to stop sharing the feedback that Blizzard built this forum to collect.
How many times do people need to tell you this stuff matters before you finally accept that it does? This is modern game development, and pretty basic creative process stuff honestly.
If it could. Normally, to keep that many resources in hands until turn 5, you needed to play next to nothing, and pray to have found your draws. You either need to pass turn 1 or get teacher on hand on 4, and each draw you used to dig is one less spell and naga in the turn. As a player, board decks frequently created boards against it, from Beast Hunter to mech paladin and Dh. The only decks that couldn’t create them didn’t play threats on turns 1-4.
There are only so many draws you can have in hand at a time. If you play spite lash on 5, chances are you either dump your hand, or don’t build a full board, amounting to play a few cards in a turn. They just needed to kill the spite lash, or failing that, turtle. No minions I’m the deck got over 3 attack except for Teacher.
I’m not. The high roll simply don’t matter if the deck does not ends up winning, and at best, the deck high rolled everytime. If you played it in any form, you know that Warrior could Clear it, Warlock could clear it, Control Paladin could clear it, and Paladin, Mage, Hunter and DH, even rogue, could board up as to not allow the turn to happen.
At worst, the High roll never happens and you lose. So if the deck would lose without it and COULD lose with it, what was so powerful about it?
Most decks already responded to it. Naga mage didn’t win every time it played the combo. It still loses, a lot. Plenty of times, the win comes at 8, with Mordresh.
You’re saying things, but most of them are untrue
Now that most of the meta got nerfed, then, which few decks opened up to be played? The nerfs are here: what decks were being held under? What more needs to be nerfed?
And, by the way, I do agree with this statement - if a deck is winning 80% of its’ games and killing diversity then that is just about the most powerful mandate for a change that exists, and also an indication that maybe the designers/developers actually don’t know what they’re doing… but most of the balance questions in Hearthstone are much more subtle than that, and I personally think it’s a good thing that multiple factors/perspectives come into consideration when making these decisions.
Except It really isn’t many factors.
It’s who cry loudest. Not even who is majority but who is loudest.
Says you I guess? Doesn’t sound likely that a professional videogame company with thousands of employees and decades worth of experience/expertise would make decisions that way, but I am open to being convinced if you have any compelling non-circumstantial evidence to support this claim… as far as I can tell you just don’t like this patch, which is totally fine.
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Unless they go ahead and open it is a question of what you believe rather than what they do.
I have no reason to believe otherwise because blizzard is frequently trying to capitalize on it as such.
So why i should believe otherwise despite of the possibility existing?
Devs tweeted reasoning for the nerfs. Plenty of those were “people feel bad about it”
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Right, I’m not denying it was a factor and I agree with many participants in this convo that it is an important one, but as I’ve stated before I think every decision they make also probably considers engagement numbers, pack sales etc - information that they definitely track but would not be in their best interests to make publicly available.
Isn’t the fact that these guys have been producing some of the most successful videogames of all time for decades reason enough to believe that they don’t make decisions solely based on random thoughts from social media? Seems pretty self-evident to me…
To be clear.
They sell as such so we have all reasons to take it as such.
It’s not me telling it. It devs and even patch notes.
Right, and so your premise is that 100% of their decision making process is included in the patch notes they make publicly available? Again, it seems pretty self-evident to me that is not the case in the context of a videogame company with decades of experience/expertise and thousands of employees…
No. My premise is that if they are declaring as such we should take as it despite of whatever they really do.
Because it’s oficial info.
I have plenty of experiences getting rolled over by this exact combo as pirate warrior, which only gave up a 1 drop on the way. It’s really not that uncommon for them to have just won the game prior to that.
Beast Hunter and Mech paladin are two decks that can high roll stats beyond what the spitelash turn was capable of, and DH could high roll S’theno to counter it, but generally didn’t have an answer to spitelash going off along with removal.
Yep, and it wasn’t super common that decks could do either when that hit on curve, hence the fact that spitelash on 5 was a large chunk of the deck’s overall win rate.
Because you are highly, HIGHLY overstating how easily decks responded to a spitelash turn 5 pop off. Even if they did respond to it, the mage often drew enough or forced resource expenditure to the point where it still won them the game, they just finished off the opponent a few turns later because of how effectively the spitelash turn pressured, dug for resources, and set up lethal over the next few turns.
The deck was pretty much built around that turn happening as soon as possible, and generally lost when it didn’t unless the opponent was a slow control deck.
Just because the deck had a middling overall win rate didn’t make the turn 5 spitelash combo balanced. The majority of times where spitelash could be used on 5, the mage won.
I’d personally rather my matchups not be largely decided on if a card is played in the early/mid game due to the overall power of that one card.
But that’s most of the competitive hearthstone meta right now.
There’s very little solace for players that lose to stuff like that when people respond with “yeah, but the deck only wins slightly less than half the time!”
Ok, I’m just going to do your work for you. From the introduction to the patch notes:
“Roughly half the changes in this patch are balance-motivated and intended to target the winrates of [specific decks] directly. The rest of the changes in this patch are not PRIMARILY motivated by power level, but are instead focused on improving the play-against experience of some of the more polarizing cards in the game”
They didn’t mention social media once, and I actually think that’s a pretty good summation of the two main reasons why dev teams make changes in games sometimes - some are from a more numbers-oriented development standpoint, and some are made from a more subjective “ooops this didn’t turn out to be as fun/appreciated as we thought it would” standpoint, a consideration common to all artistic enterprises.
But this statement:
Really doesn’t correspond to the language in the patch notes, which is why I think your claim is lacking in evidence and/or common sense. Again player feedback was a factor here for sure but definitely not the only one, and they explicitly say that right from the top… and I am personally happy there is a professional development team in charge of Hearthstone.
Taking player experience as a relevant factor for the changes is very different than “nerfing for the people than cry the loudest”. And it’s not really that subjective, you could say that playing against infinite generation barrens priest was an objectively bad experience for most decks, as is facing a 50-armor warrior as a combo deck without endless damage.
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So your deck that lost to naga Mage was… pirate warrior?
You do understand that pirate warrior barely qualify for tier 4? It’s not being rolled over by Naga Mage, it’s being rolled over by EVERYTHING.
And still, it was HEAVILY favored against Naga Mage
Dh didn’t need to roll S’theno. the deck had agression enough it had nearly 60% chance to win the matchup, from D4 to Legend.
It was common enough the deck didn’t win and was tier 3. I don’t think you’re getting the point. The deck is overwhelmingly stacked to try and het the turn at 5. At 6, the winrate dropped a whopping 7%. And still, even when it got the turn, hit the nuts and highrolled, it still didn’t win everytime. It didn’t win there even half the time.
This seemingly overwhelmingly powerful turned rolled over to most decks on ladder and tied with the rest, being heavily favored in 3 of the 20 matchups.
It factually didn’t. The deck had a poor winrate because even with the combo, all the meta contestants could clear or play around it, except Naga Priest and Thief Rogue. Let me clarify that for you:
Naga mage was a deck built around a turn. It GOT that turn. You say that the TURN frequently won the game, but from d4 to legend, with the deck played most optimally, focusing on said turn, was unfavored against:
- Fell DH, who won 56% of the games by outagroing it
- Ramp Druid, who won 52% of the games despite having no removal to speak of, and poor turtling untill high ramps
- Big Beast hunter, at 55% who could outstat it.
- Quest Hunter at 53%, who could outaggro it, despite being one of the factually worst decks of the meta.
- Mech mage, at 55%, which despite having minusculous stat sticks could outgun it’s board.
- It lost to boar priest at 63%, which builds no board whatsoever, because it’s win condition would actually win the game
- Bomb Rogue, which also didn’t build a board, won an overwhelming 63%, by damaging it.
- Curse Warlock could also win at 55%
It was tied with paladin, Naga Priest, Murlock Shaman, and Murlock Warlock.
Every class, literally, every class, could deal with the board and win, with at least one deck. Most Specifically, all classes other than paladin had a deck that was favored against it, even very poor meta contenders, like Murlock Shaman and Warlock, at tier 4, and Quest Warrior.
The solace is in knowing that they could have won, even with the board, with any class, most of the time, if they played better. They were likely favored.
The deck allowed victory and competition to every archetype on ladder. Literally every archetype. It’s turn didn’t kill you, nor formed an overwhelmeing board (the biggest minion in the deck WAS a 5/4, and you likely wouldn’t play it). It effectively forgoed playing minions for 5 turns and played them, all at once.
And then lost most of the time.
It was high skill, it didn’t win too much, even stacking it’s whole hand around a turn, and at all ranks, it was 3-4% of the meta. As far as balance goes, it was perfect.
It’s nerf allowed no other decks on the meta, No one gained nothing, one deck was simply erased.
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None of these are looking at the turn 5 spitelash win rate, which you have consistently ignored.
I know that naga mage had bad match ups overall. That wasn’t the reason the card got nerfed.
Lots of that stuff high rolled faster, or more reliably than naga mage. That still doesn’t make the turn 5 spitelash turn combo fine.
Many of those decks aren’t winning because they “beat the spitelash turn,” they are winning because they either preempt it, they high roll first / better, or the spitelash turn doesn’t happen consistently enough on time against them.
None of it excuses the turn 5 spitelash turn, and several of those decks have other things that should be hit equally hard.
So? Those are still weakness of the deck. By this metric, Quest Priest is overpowered as it can be because the winrate of Purified Shard turn is 100%, even though it lost when people
Adittionaly, Naga Mage’s turn also allowed plenty of counterplay AFTER it, see every control deck in the meta being favored against it.
There exists no evaluation of a turn outside of it’s meta. A deck is only as powerful as it’s meta allows it to be.
A turn isn’t “unnaceptable” because you think it’s so. If the whole meta can play around it, as early as it is, then it’s not too powerful, by any metric, because they are still winning against it, for the same reason Quest Priest lost, and Tickatus burning your whole deck and removing everything with premium costed cards still lost, and Uther death knight still lost.
Played around X is still playing against X.