I’ve had a game design idea for HS that I want to share. It would “kill two birds with one stone” and here are the “stones”:
- As cards are getting increasingly powerful over the time but hero powers stay the same, it feels more and more terrible to use your mana for hero powers.
- I believe that an efficient way to increase the design space without making too radical changes or increasing difficulty of the rules of the game might improve the game.
Here is the idea: Everytime you use your hero power, it gives you something extra, let’s call it an “essence” for now. The essence doesn’t have any immediate effect like the hero power does, but is relevant in a different way, see below.
Regarding 2), the essence opens up the space for new effects – effects like: “costs 1 less mana for every essence you have”, “burn all your essences and draw that many cards”, “playable only if you have at least 2 essences”, etc. Importantly, it doesn’t radically change the game and essences could be nicely and modestly graphically represented somewhere in the area of hero power (maybe as small circles around it, maybe just as a number).
Regarding 1), it should be balanced so that you still generally prefer playing cards over hero powers, but hero powers would now be much more relevant.
Now, connecting hero powers with gaining an essence is a very abstract idea and can be taken further in various directions. Here is a possible direction:
- If you don’t use your hero power for (say) 3 turns, you lose one (or all) of your essences. This would make essences feel fresh and more different from mana, being more than just a number, having its own peculiarity.
- Besides effects of cards that use the essences, essences could do something “on their own”. Otherwise adding them would feel a bit artificial. It could be the following. Everytime you reach (say) 4 essences, you get a fairly powerful card (or, possibly, an immediate effect). Again, it should be balanced so that you don’t want to spend 8 mana (4 hero powers) just to get this card, but if you already have 2 essences (because you didn’t get cards on curve), prioritizing hero powers to get there becomes reasonable (indeed, the value of that card will depend on the particular deck, I am talking about some average).
- Following the previous point, these cards that you get when you have 4 essences could be unique to specific heroes (like Jaina would have a different one from Medivh, although they are both mages). If this uniqueness of heroes is desirable, my idea “kills three birds”.
To sum up very briefly:
The idea is that every use of hero power gives the player an essence which can be interacted with by cards and has some effect of its own. As a consequence, using hero powers will be more of an option, reducing the bad feeling when using one and also leading to interesting decisions (using mana on hero power vs using it on a card). As another consequence, it will open up a lot of design space for cards’ effects.
What do you guys think of this? I believe it has a potential to make the game better.
No thanks, enough classes use the hero power quite enough, and its pretty powerfull as it is atm, there is enough RNG in the game so over all it just seems like a bad idea imo.
Wait, why do you say “there is enough RNG in the game”? If you suggest that this would bring in more RNG, I don’t see how. In fact, I think it would rather help against “bad” RNG of drawing poorly. If you draw poorly, you can at least spend your mana on hero power, and if this is more powerful, then you don’t fall behind as much.
Ofc it would bring more rng into the game, just like any other generated card does, keep these kinda thoughts and plays for brawl, we dont need more created by cards in ranked, and for sure not for using heropower, just think about it for a second, what would it look like playing against a druid with that power? A warlock, a delom hunter??? No thanks
I meant that every hero has their own unique card that they get, there is no random generation, it is always the same card.
Id say let be as it is, and focus more on other things, if you draw badly too often you either have a bad build, or you mulligan the wrong cards for the matchup, bad rng is part of the game just like good rng is, so its fine to have bad draws once in a while, we all tried it.
This is mostly besides the point now, the main thing was not to fight bad rng. Anyway, thanks for your opinion. Let’s see what other people think.
But it would implement more RNG, and we dont need such things, and for sure not for using hero power lol, like i said, if you feel like your drawn too often are useless, no “essence” would ever help you improve that anyway, but it would for sure make the game worse in many ways, anyway im not too worried, this will never be a thing outside brawl.
It would not add more RNG, not in any way that I can see. There are no cards randomly generated.
Demon hunter usinv hero power 13 times in a turn lol suuuree give him essences
Ofc it would lol any generated card adds RNG
Indeed, cards that allow you to use hero power many times would need to be taken into consideration. But there are simple solutions: like you can only get one essence a turn.
DH’s rewards for essences and effects related to them could be slightly weaker than for other classes, because DH’s hero power is cheaper.
Then we got the druid, using hero power 15 times a game
Honestly seens like a bad idea, sounds like a brawl
Are you joking? I have said (already twice) that there would be no generated cards.
Omg how new are you lol? ANY card beside the 30 you put into the deck would be GENERATED
It would always be the same card, how does that add RNG?
you would have more cards than what you started with, thats the first part even if you know what the outcome of the essence will be, you still generted RNG, and you can just build a deck that will benefit extra from it, so now your opponent dont just have to take the 30 cards into account but also the essences and amount of times its been generated, it would make a lot of decks much stronger than they already are, a druid with no turn 1-2-3-4 now is fine since its rare, but I would hate to see him generate extra cards for his glowfly or something like that, just because some people a bad at picking mulligans
Nothing to do? Oh its fine i wasnt planning to do nothing but hero power and generate essences for the first 4 turns, to then guff ramp glowfly lunar arbor gg
I think it’s a bad idea because having to hero power for not having a card to play/saving resources is a fair trade off for a greedier deck.
It would feel like a quest deck and i’ve had enough of those.
Also don’t wana buff decks that already want to hero power e.g. HP mage, Handlock, Quest Hunter etc
So i don’t like but it’s not a terrible idea and it’s the opposite of adding RNG, no idea what the other person is on about 
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