Request: Unlimited Deck Slots

General Discussion
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I just want to say that I have hard times to save my decks and tracking them from a notepad file or some add-on is hard for me while i am playing this game from my desktop, laptop and my phone together. I’m playing this game from beta and our collection is growing in time with newer expansions.

I’m playing all of the classes time to time in wild and standard. I can only hold 1 standard and 1 wild deck always for each class with 18 deck slots. As you know all classes have different archetypes and when I want to play 2 or more archetypes in a format, I always have to delete one deck from another class or its standard or wild deck. I’m using some add-ons to save my decks ok but I don’t play this game at home always and sometimes I had to delete my decks on phone before I was able to save them.

What I’m asking for is - as you can understand easily- more deck slots. You can make it like 1 slot for each class and the classes can open a new path to their decks and it may be 18 decks for every class for example. Unlimited might be much ok but I guess 18 decks for every class is a fair way.

I don’t think it is too hard to add a package like that to the game. I know that This isn’t only my concern and it bothers some people like me. 2 decks for all classes just aren’t enough. It maybe enough for competitive play ok I can understand that but it isn’t funwise.

Do I really have to connect from a computer to save my decks to the notepad file which i saved my decks before or Do i have to save my decks to a file in my phone then send it to my computer via e-mail or a cable to add it to my existing notepad file with saved decks or Do I have to create the deck in an add-on by looking the deck from my phone’s screen ?

Is this really fun? I’m playing this game for fun and it really isn’t fun when I’m working to save my decks like it is a job. Files, copying, etc.

I hope some people from Blizzard can response this request, sooner or later.

Also If you can keep this thread alive, I will be very happy because It will make easier to be seen by Blizzard.

Also+, Please comment the thread, What do you think about this situation? Are Deck slots enough for you and why?

2 Likes
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This is not only your concern. As someone that tries many different archetypes across pretty much all classes I certainly feel the pain of not having a stronger deck management.

You mentioned three main things that I’ll try to address:

  1. “It’s not fun to manage your decks” and I agree, it certainly isn’t. However I bet that Blizzard has data on how many of those slots are taken and, I’m sorry to inform you, I also bet that most players don’t care. They have a couple of decks that they are laddering with and that they’ll happily dust for the next flavor of the month. People like you and me and some regulars in this forum are a rare breed that is constantly kindling with decks. The vast majority will win, so unless a considerable part of the population becomes tinkering deck builders, we’re out of luck.

  2. “Unlimited might be too much but 18 decks per class is fair”. Your decks are held on a database. Because of that, the data of each deck must be transmitted back and forth. While that seems trivial, it’s a costly operation for the servers and your client. You don’t want that unless you want to see your mobile data disappearing in the many minutes it would take to update a large collection of decks. Speaking of mobile, I believe the biggest concern would be the mobile interface. This reason alone should prevent large scale changes in deck management.

  3. “I don’t think is to hard to do” I’m sorry but as a game developer I’ve heard this way too many times to take it seriously. It’s easy in your head. Technically is hard, very hard. UI changes, database redesign and communication protocol revamp. It’s an headache. A huge headache for something most players don’t care about.

I’d personally be happy with 9 slots per class… that’s 81 decks! But that alone is a freaking headache to create and we’re just a handful.

3 Likes
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As a database developer myself, I know and care a lot about how database operations can affect performance of an application. I know that the amount of data to be transferred is a key element there. I also know that sheer size of stored data has effect - the larger the database size, the more important it is to build properly indexed code, otherwise searching data becomes too slow.

However … a single deck takes almost no storage. We know from the deck copy/paste interface that a complete deck can be stored in a single 80-character string. (The string uses a subset of low-ASCII, so with additional compression can probably be stored in less than 70 bytes, but let’s assume Blizzard doesn’t do that). The deck string does not contain the deck title, so add another 25 characters maximum for that. That 105 bytes, probably less, per deck.

Suppose that the current 18 deck maximum would be lifted. Suppose that you go all ham and after a few months have two hundred decks. By that time, your challenge will be remembering which deck is which. Your challenge will still not be the time to upload or download your deck collection. Two hundred decks, times 105 bytes. Approximately 21 KB. That’s all.
Even when you’re on data, and on a bad connection, it takes just a fraction of a second to transport that data.
(According to Wikipedia, 3G offers at least 200kbit/s, which is 25 KB/s)

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Your decks are not saved as the 80-character string on the server. We know that because the 80-character string always includes golden cards first and your deck can hold any combination of golden and non-golden cards. Your full deck spec is stored, not just the string. I don’t know how that is done or compressed, I’ll give you that, but at some point updating your decks, especially if you play over different platforms would be costly and not the seamless experience we have now.

That or I’m too sensitive to DB stuff because data engineers are always telling me what I’m doing wrong. :slight_smile:

1 Like
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The technology just isn’t there yet my dude, you’ll have to do with 18 deckslots

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I’d just like to add that if you play in tournaments, with the nature of the newly added specialist format, this is 3 deck slots constantly taken up on top of your wild and standard decks. This of course is assuming you only play 1 specialist deck. If you intend on multi classing with specialist you’re gonna have a bad time.

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Probably true.
If I were to design the database, then the decks would be stored as a reference to the card (probably a 16-bit integer), and a flag (1 bit) to indicate golden. Order is not relevant so it would just be 30 rows. Or less rows, and an 8-byte integer for the number. (Could have done a bit for duplicated, but counter is more flexible and allows same structure for Arena decks)

In communication between server and client, this can be compressed. Given that it’s already pretty small, I wouldn’t bother though. Of course, some communication protocols have (low rate but still effective) compression as standard option.
But even 30 rows of 17 bits per deck, plus the name, all uncompressed, would still be less than 100 bytes per deck. Really not an issue on modern internet speeds.

Heh! As a DBA who often has to tell developers (and managers) what they are doing wrong, I can relate to this! :wink:

1 Like
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developer myself here.
to the thread starter:
I like your post. Probably not the first, but I like the initiative.

Unfortunately, I agree with the others that “it should not be hard to do” can be very untrue. And the problem is, that while a really nice developed system would take care of this with ease, back then, when money was an issue and deadlines were looming - probably the devs working there had no choice but getting something quick and dirty done. Then one builds on that system more and more stuff, features that had been wanted and that sound cool. And now you are there with a house of cards and you would like to change a card that’s not at the top anymore: it can be a very hard job.
What makes me wonder is that back when they introduced 9 extra slots, why they only doubled it. But then again, might be the bad way the bottom of the construct looks like.
One other thing to consider is, that development costs a ton of money that most people have no idea about. Depends on the country, the branch, the company, but I think it is a nice rough estimation to say that one person day costs 1000$. If, however, two devs need to sit down 3 days each to implement all the changes, that’s not where it ends: there are people that test software to not have new features bring new bugs into the system (and, to be fair, there will always be things overlooked), you got the ones managing the devs and the testers, and so on. That easily doubles the costs, if not even more.
So this probably came up at Blizzard, then the devs looked at the code, came back to the ones proposing the idea and said: yeah… it’s unfortunately complicated. Cleaning this up and making a proper base without breaking other stuff, probably takes us 5-10 days. The managers think: ok, so I multiply by 2 and here I face 10k-20k development costs. For a feature that won’t bring us money, but establishes the game quality. Let me position that against this list of features … oh, no, I think these sound better. For the moment, more decks are on ice, we rather move forward with the automatic deck builder addon.

I am supporting your request, but I just want to tell you that everything costs money. Nobody is going to pay for that feature. If you find 1000 supporters that would pay 5$ each - then Blizzard might chip in the rest. Though there is not only money, but also time, so I am sure that 50%+ of all dev time is spent on new expansion integration, so there is always someone who also decides on what feature manpower is used for.

Another thing: there should be a limit. Otherwise someone can bring down not only his own data plan, but also blizzard’s systems. I find it fair to say, though, that neither 9 nor 18 slots in total is a reasonable number and never was! data transmission should already be small for decks and storage at Blizzard hopefully low - some design architect hopefully did a decent job about that.
Most reasonable might be a number of slots available tied to the amount of money you spent on the game, but that would be a nightmare to code. But well, 99 or 99*2 decks - why not? Should be now really enough for 99.9% of people and if done right, wouldn’t affect neither DBs nor data plans very much.

Anyway, I hope your wish comes true, I am also always at my limit and I hate deleting decks I maybe never tried.

3 Likes
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TL:DR - Spaghetti code is a thing that exists and it’s a pain to deal with;

work costs money, and implementing features like this isn’t very attractive if it doesn’t bring anything in in exchange for the work done;

“unlimited” is far too much for any company with finite resources (that means every company) to handle and could easily break the game;

if those hurdles would be dealt with (via crowdfunding for instance) then it would be a really cool feature, one that Blizzard would probably be willing to implement. (I think.)

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Well, The “Unlimited” here was an overstatement to attract people and blizzard to the thread, You got me.

I know everything costs money, and I am paying the game time to time already. When you pay this game, It is only for cards or supporting them to develop this game ?

I mean, You are saying it like we are only paying for cards. I don’t think it is like that. When you pay to an hotel for example, You don’t only pay for the room. You buy the service.

And deckslots here are the service I’m asking for. It is like “Hey, I have paid this room but there is no power connection here”. What you call here as hotel is like “Sorry but you didn’t pay for electricity, You just paid for room and you need to pay for power connection as well to use that”

Your point of view is a bit shallow.
People can stop supporting because of anything. Bad gameplay balance, bad matchmaking, bad cards, bad collection manager, server issues or even less/bad cosmetics. What we buy here is the service. Not a physical product. We are paying for servers, game content, customer support, game security, the arts of game and any other services I don’t remember to mention here. Deck slots here is the one of the services the game needs to present us. So it is already my right to ask for because I am paid for it already.

The possibility is a different issue here. I don’t know programming so much so I can’t tell anything here, I just can say that;

“Ok, I can understand if it is impossible to do that”

But if you say that i need to pay it, sorry, it is so wrong because people already are paying for it. I am highlighting it again. We are buying service when we buy pre-orders, packs, cosmetics and arena run. Not the products.

I don’t think it is impossible to add 10 deckslots for every class. Even lesser amount might enough for and help any player. Like 50 decks for every account should be fair but 18 deckslots in a card game with 9 class and 2 game modes are really less.

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You’ve made it clear that you’re allready paying money for packs, so you feel entitled for getting other stuff, but that’s just not reality.
The game is free to play and those services you mentioned are included in that price.
All the “need” in this game are free. If they weren’t all in the game you wouldn’t be able to play the game. You are paying for the “want”, the unnecesairy extras, the optional stuff. Extra deckslots is one more thing on the list of “want” in the game, so if you want it, you gotta pay for it, but you can’t demand it and expect to get it for free, or be given to everyone.

If the demand is high enough and people are willing to pay I’m sure blizzard will give it to us.

1 Like