Matchup Polarisation

General Discussion
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First of all this isn’t a ‘Nerf X card or I will quit the game’ thread, although I will mention conjurers calling lol. It’s more of a plea to blizzard for future card design.

To pre-empt the people who will respond saying ‘learn 2 play’. I have played hearthstone since it started and have consistently reached legend, so please what’s the point of saying that when there can be a constructive discussion.

To the point. For a while now there has been a theme in hearthstone expansions of printing exciting cards that make a huge impact and have significant or endless value. This leads to polarisation of matchups or the ‘rock, paper, scissors style gameplay’. For me the first time I can remember this happening (could be wrong) was MSOG with Jade druid. The possibility of infinite jade golems with increasing stats meant that no other control decks could compete. Yes, jade druid wasn’t a ‘tier 1 deck’, but it was prevalent in the meta and I don’t think theres many people who want to go into a game in which you are almost guaranteed to lose. I think the argument over whether aggro decks or control decks etc take more skill is a pointless one. But most people have a preference for which kind of archetype they like to play, and being forced into playing aggro as many people advocate for on the ‘nerf X card threads’ is not fun.

This was true in the last meta and its also there in this meta too, and from my perspective this is down to conjurer’s calling. It’s simply too much value in the space of either 1 or 2 turns for control decks to compete. Yes, control warrior has enough tools to deal with the endless giants. But other classes in which there have been control decks cannot compete. This is evident from the distinct lack of priest, which is almost always confined to some kind of slow play, in the meta.

I accept that at first these kind of cards are fun and will bring people back to hearthstone with each expansion. But the question is will it keep them in the long term? Around the end of the last expansion blizzard reached out to the community to find out what would bring them back to hearthstone. This is commendable, but could imply that player numbers are dropping and therefore perhaps the answer to that question is no.

In response to this Dog (HS streamer) wrote a brilliant post about hearthstone’s problems including about polarisation of matchups. Here’s the link to that post: https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/asjsr4/dogs_response_to_iksarthoughts_on_hearthstone/. To their credit Blizz has listened to some of the feedback from the community and has changed the meta by nerfing and buffing cards.

However, it seems the policy of printing these cards has continued. I will reserve comment about the motivation for this, which isn’t the point of this post.

Hearthstone is about psychology. In this game you have to lose, if you reach legend you still lose around 50% of the time. It’s a war of attrition in which if you let anger at a loss affect your decision making you fall down the ladder. As a result of this (as Dog mentions) people experiment with their decks to minimise the chances of a loss against their worst match ups. For me personally this is one of the most fun parts of the game. With cards like the ones I have mentioned there is less and less chance of you being able to affect matchups by teching your decks. For a while it is was even fun to experiment with decks with such difficult matchups. One of my best memories of hearthstone is playing reno c’thun priest in the jade druid meta. But it has now reached a point where my motivation to play has been ground down by the lottery of going into games in which I am either guaranteed a win or guaranteed a loss. It seems from Iskar’s post at the end of last meta that this is true for other people too.

To summarise/TLDR: Blizzard please stop printing cards that polarise the meta. There are examples in which cards with a lot of value have been great. An example is Jarraxus, which gave a significant advantage against control decks but could still be quite easily countered due to the trade off of lower health. Unfortunately, this isn’t true for cards like conjurer’s calling and DK Rexxar.

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Firstly I’d like to commend you on a VERY well written and insightful post :smiley:

I have to agree with a lot of what you say. There is becoming a running theme with these ‘power’ cards that have been cropping up. In my opinion, and it is just my opinion, I think a lot of the reasoning behind Blizzard printing cards like this is simply for ‘wow factor’.

In the early days of Hearthstone there were really only 2 ways to play…you went aggro or you went control. There were minor iterations on these opposite types of game play but at the heart of the game that was more or less your choice.

As the game began to evolve over the years the differing playstyles also had to evolve to keep the game more interesting and so aggro and control diverged into even more differing types of play…more so for control than aggro with the evolution of combo and OTK decks. But from my perspective the decks with these big ‘wow’ moments became more and more prevalent.

Now I used to play online poker quite a bit, but it always used to frustrate the hell out of me because it too, unlike it’s real life counterpart did a similar thing. Now I’m sorry if this is a spoiler for any online poker players who think its just as random as the real thing, but it’s not. Online poker companies intentionally accentuate hands that are dealt out. Playing online poker you will consistently see far more straights, flushes and full houses than you would ever see in a similar amount of games played in real life. The reason for this? It makes the game more EXCITING!!!

Now let me just say, I’m not condoning it. But I’ve been seeing Hearthstone head the same way for a while now. Those big WOW moments…a wall priest buffing a minion to hit you for 70 damage…a rogue springing out 5 Leeroy’s to smash you into the ground, throwing out that 35/35 pogo-hopper…even zerging your opponent into oblivion by turn 4 as a zoolock……it is more and more becoming about that big ‘look at how badass I am’ moment than the skill and tactic the game was originally founded on. And it probably is related to the drop in player activity…trying to recapture lost audiences with the ‘super cool’ moments that you can create.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that the entire game has descended into battle of ‘who has got the biggest nuclear weapon’ but it is starting to feel like these big hitting moments are being integrated into the game more and more. I wanted to believe the game had got past it after wall and minblast priest rotated out with the new year, but with the likes of conjurer’s calling (even though I still believe this isn’t the super unbeatable deck people claim it to be), the recently corrected tempo rogue and the crazy stupid decision to release a cheap magnetic echo card I wonder if those ridiculous power swing moments will ever truly be moved on from.

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Thanks for taking the time to read my post and for your considered response. The insight into online poker is interesting, and when I think about that I don’t see the higher chance of big hands as inherently bad. Hearthstone has always had an element of this big exciting randomness and I’m sure that’s part of the reason why many people including myself played the game. But I think the balance has tipped too far that way, and from your post it seems like you have become frustrated with it too.

From the wider gaming community it seems like this is a big problem in the industry. It seems as if there has been some kind of microscopic examination within the gaming industry of how rewards in games make people keep playing and companys produce games which provide consistent short term excitement from limited time investment. A cynical take would be that its an intentional ploy to exploit the dopamine reward pathway in our brains.

As a result of this in my opinion many games have lost their depth and soul which made them interesting even after many hours of playtime. It has happened in WoW (although some people disagree) and that has resulted in the popularity of classic and classic servers being developed.

I think the way to solve this problem is for more communication between developers and the community. Hopefully some people who are smarter than me can come up with some ideas to make that balance of short term excitement and long term depth better :smiley:

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I just love these threads. I want to add a couple of notes on random sentences, if you fine folks don’t mind.

I fully agree, in fact, I don’t think you’ll find many people disagreeing with you on this one. The problem is, this is (or the last time I heard, was) the actual design strategy. I’ve mentioned on other threads that the balance most of us wish is utopic from a design point of view. However I believe that it should be possible to have less polarised matchups.

Yes, it is. Funny enough I also played online poker and the mental aspect of the game makes or breaks the player. In Hearthstone there are other factors, e.g. playing a faster deck is always better assuming similar win rates. But it is almost pure attrition for those playing competitively.

I’ll be honest, I don’t care about the competitive aspect. I reached Rank 5 once and it was the worst experience I had in grinding a game. Never again! I love deck building, that’s my thing, so all of these issues are close to irrelevant to me, but I do understand that for someone that wants to compete, these are serious issues that affect performance and entertainment.

Blizzard changed the ladder over time, for the best, in my opinion. Still, it is far from fair game in my opinion.

That’s what I do for a living, actually. The problem is not the examination, in my opinion. There isn’t a mysterious agenda, the purpose of my job is quite simple: make our games more entertaining. The problem, and this is a completely personal opinion, is that many games companies lost track of their audiences. If this happened in the car industry, we would be seeing Ferrari making cheap city cars and Renault producing vans with racing options.

I understand why the game industry is doing this. The AAA market is small and they want to get larger audiences. Well… it’s back firing. To be clear I don’t think Hearthstone is one of the “bad guys”. It is a casual mobile game. Every issue you described is actually fine considering this. The problem is that Hearthstone presents itself as a competitive esports game thus contradicting its own design. This creates expectations and those expectations create posts like yours.

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Thanks, its good to hear from someone who has more understanding of the design process.

With regard to deckbuilding, that’s something which is a big part of the fun for me too. I feel that this design philosophy does limit my deckbuilding a lot especially when experimenting with control decks. Its interesting to hear that you don’t feel like that, and I wonder why that is.

I see what you mean about losing track of the audiences and that probably has some effect in hearthstone, but I’m not sure that is entirely the case in this situation. I wouldn’t put myself in the group of people who expects hearthstone to be a competitive esports game.

I think the microscopic examination thing was a bad way of putting it sorry. I just mean that a big focus seems to have become on the short term mechanisms of reward in gaming. But this has left other aspects of games neglected. Like the focus is one small part of gaming and no one has taken a step back to look at the bigger picture.

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My wild guess is that I don’t care at all about ladder while you consistently reach Legend. Deck building is a lot more limited with ladder in mind, because losing matters.

I play Wild Casual almost exclusively. Conceding a game just because I’m not having fun has zero consequences and given that I find myself playing against other deck builders trying cool things just for the sake of it.

In a way I feel there’s a lot more pressure and high stakes for you than for me when it comes to deck building. Nothing wrong with that, just different approaches to the game that end up influencing the act of building decks.

Regarding audiences and competitiveness, gotcha. :slight_smile:

It wasn’t a bad way to put it. Microscopic is actually an excellent word for it. I can predict certain future actions before they are even decided, let alone acted on. You nailed the problem, to be honest. When you say “has left other aspects of games neglected” that is exactly it.

Let me give you an example that is easier for me to explain. I’m a huge football videogame fan. I play PES and/or FIFA since 2003. What’s currently FIFA’s focus? A gacha mechanic called FUT that has ZERO football gameplay in it. It’s a huge money maker for EA but for a hardcore football fan and long time player, it’s just bad. The result, I’m probably worth 70€ to 140€ a year for these companies and now I just stopped buying them. Third year I haven’t purchased a football game… but if you think they are losing money because the hardcore fan base is leaving, you are mistaken. And that is ultimately why the industry is doing this. The quick reward is in opening Ronaldo or Messi in the FUT packets, not the gameplay mastering. It’s exactly the problem you identified.

These mechanics are fine (the non-predatory ones) in games that have a meta game around virtual currency. See my point? FIFA is neglecting single and multiplayer gameplay for a non-core mechanic, because money.

You are right, mate. No need to say sorry. :slight_smile:

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Ah yeah, that’s exactly what I mean. FIFA is one of the games I was thinking about. I’m sure it does make them a lot of money in the short term, in my head it seems like a really short sighted and bad strategy if you want to maintain a loyal customer base. Blizzard seems to have gone for this design philosophy across all their games and despite a significant amount of backlash its obviously continuing with it at this point. Would balancing the design philosophy a bit more not keep bringing more players as well as those ultra competitive players who spend a lot of money to get every card every expansion.

For example, I know its more complex with balancing than this, but in the case of jade idol what if it had some kind of negative like dealing 1 damage every time its used. It doesnt affect the dynamic much. Against aggro you wouldn’t shuffle any more idols so its 2 damage max. In control matchups you can still get those huge golems and would still most likely win but its way less polarised.

Btw thanks again for your responses. Was just expecting people to tell me to get good tbh haha.

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I have to say, I agree with this TOTALLY. I don’t profess to be the greatest deck builder ever, but I’ve enjoyed good success with decks I’ve put together myself over the years. A non-freeze control mage during the naxxramus/BRM/league of explorers meta got me my first ever above 10 ranking. A self built version of big mage, before big mage was popular, during the beginning of Boomsday Project got me above rank 5 for the first time ever. The most successful one actually being in the last meta where a dragon/TTK deck I put together managed to get me all the way up to rank 2 because it successfully countered not only Odd Paladin, but wall priest and clone priest very well and was pretty strong against most of the other popular decks provided it drew half decent card draw.

This meta, however, I have been trying, unsuccessfully, to do a similar thing but the problem caused by these polarized situations is making it more and more difficult to build competitive decks than can successfully counter multiple win conditions on a consistent basis. The reason for this being that these polarized situations are not only individually strong when they are pulled off, but they are so diverse that when trying to build an off-meta deck you can only really afford to specifically tech counter 1…maybe 2 at best without sacrificing the viability of your deck and with there being at least 6 completely different top meta decks out there at the minute it stifles creativity beyond the meta

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