Hearthstone began previewing the Mini Expansion Pack this week, this time themed on Onyxia's Lair, featuring dragons as the main design element. After all, Onixia has appeared in the Stormwind Version, she dressed as the Countess of Catrana, and now everyone has come to attack the foundation of the Black Dragon Princess. Judging from the cards currently released, the designers have reinforced some old ideas, and have not launched many combination technology single cards, and the more interesting card is the new Kazakus.
Many players have questions, can this mini expansion pack really change the current game landscape, will it be like when the Otranc version was first launched, there were only two or three new cards in the World Championship, and everyone was using the old card deck. The Balancing Team had previously promised to slow down the game environment, but even Gufde, who started relatively slowly in the ladder, was actually a faster combo. To this question, Cora, the designer of the new expansion pack, responded on Twitter today.
Combo decks have dominated the environment for too long
Card gamers may have heard the phrase "card strength swells," and new cards tend to be stronger than old ones. This is also a helpless thing, if the new card is not stronger than the old card, many people are not willing to pay for it, from a business point of view, it is necessary to launch a strong new card. Secondly, card games are difficult to be in a dynamic equilibrium like MOBA or FPS games, and it is difficult to work in card games to cut when strong and strengthen when weak.
Over time, the intensity of the card game will swell to an outrageous level. When Hearthstone was in beta in 2014, the 4/5 snowman was still the strongest unit of the 4 fees, and a few months later, Dr. Bang was considered a fake card. Now, single card strength is less important, 4 fees 6/6 whiteboard entourage will you bring. Most of the decks will not be brought, hand 4 time to shoot 8/8 can be solved by the opponent, Hearthstone now emphasizes card linkage and direct damage.
The introduction of the retreat mechanism has delayed the expansion of Hearthstone's card strength to a certain extent, but the designers have loved the fee reduction mechanism, so that Wild Mode has always been popular in combination skill sets. The 2021 Storm City Expansion Pack redefines the game, the combination of skills and OTT cards is the mainstream, most of the career mission lines encourage combination skills to kill, many classes are more than one combination of skill sets, Hearthstone has entered the era of "modern Hearthstone".
Two months after the release of the Ortranc Expansion Pack, the 2021 Hearthstone Global Finals ushered in, all of which were constructed from 3-4 combo skill sets, with world champions and world runners-up being combo-based constructs. For the first time in the past seven years, combo decks have dominated the world stage, and designers have been forced to roll out a balance patch that cuts the vast majority of mainstream combo decks. By February 2022, there are still many combination decks on the ladder.
The next Hearthstone Standard Year encourages scene exchange
Unless the opponent has some entourage with strong blood-snatching ability in the early stage, who cares about what strange things are on the opposite side, everyone is frantically playing cards and then solving the game by the way, and non-functional followers without raid entries are difficult to have a bright performance on the ladder. Hearthstone a few years ago was when you took a picture of me and watched whose retinue finally succeeded in standing up. Now Hearthstone basically doesn't rely purely on the deck of the Minions, especially when the designers came up with this slashing component of the battlefield officer.
In response to this question, Cora said on Twitter that they have done their best in the past few months to reduce the intensity and performance of combination skills or OTK decks in the environment. Sara put the task hand in the latest issue of the National Service Weekly, the current appearance rate and win rate of this deck is good, and Cora also agreed to use the "new card can beat the mission technique" to measure the strength of each new card is completely reasonable. But they will try to change that.
Two months later, in April of this year, the rotation of the core series is about to begin, and the year of the griffin transitions to the following year. Cora said that after the core series rotation and the release of the next big expansion package, we will see the design team's efforts to encourage scene-based games. She keeps this in mind as she designs new cards for the upcoming year. Judging from the design ideas of this mini expansion pack, Cora feels that it is based on the principle of scene exchange to design a lot of new cards.
The Hearthstone team hopes to have as much diversity of decks as possible in each standard year, and the combination skills and OTK decks have been more active and strong in the past year, and they will continue to create other decks to balance the environment and let other building ideas have room to play. Many of the new cards in this mini expansion pack are designed with an eye to the future, not just to enter the current construction. This is why some new cards seem difficult to add to an existing combo deck.
Will Hearthstone really slow down in two months?
As a veteran hearthstone player and card game enthusiast, Sara didn't want designers to design the kind of decks that could easily OTK opponents in the ladder. The two-month retirement environment and the rotation of the core series may be able to slightly make everyone change from crazy card combination skills to more attention to scene competition. However, the shaman has the routine of the snow parrot, completely rejecting the scene exchange, constantly freezing the opponent's retinue, and the shaman may rise again.
The last time the designers encouraged Hearthstone to exchange scenes was in the Doghead Expansion Pack version, which was too aggressive for the Second Prince, The Malevolent Summoner, bone nightmare, and passage creeper, allowing all decks to play the BUFF Entourage routine. The game does become a fight scene, but it depends on who draws this BUFF earlier and unfolds it. Especially when the magic block magic component was still in the environment, the warlock could even pull out the Void Lord in 5 rounds, which was also uncomfortable.
Judging by the new game accessories and designer interviews in the latest month, Hearthstone is highly likely to launch the 11th class in the next standard year, which is most likely a warrior monk. Sara hopes that the martial arts monk profession will not be like the demon hunter, who rules standards and wildness on the first day of his debut, and the fast attack and combination skills are extremely strong. If the designer wants to slow down the game environment, then the new class may be played around the scene, after all, the martial arts monk is the physics department.
However, the strongest deck in the game last month was the Plagiarism Thief, who is essentially a deck with a strong ability to compete for the scene, with 3 fees for 2 3/3, and 4 fees for two 4/5 raids. If designers only rely on the fee reduction mechanism to create this kind of scene exchange, then the game speed still encourages over-expansion. However, if the game environment is too slow, it will become the environment of the barren land, and the priest with the most resources will throw down the taunt unit, and the opponent will be ruined.
epilogue
Since the last patch made some checks and balances on Wild Mode, Wild Mode has become more chaotic, and the mainstream OTK deck is only left with Overload Sa and Ghost Thief, but Battle Roar Sa has left other card sets with the main scene without much chance to return. Snowfall and parrots are constantly controlled, so that everyone must bring the activated dragon's breath to target, otherwise they can run after Shad Walker is off the field, and the war roar is essentially a combination of skills. Designers don't care about Wild Mode, though.
For now, it seems that after Microsoft announced the acquisition of Blizzard, the internal personnel of Hearthstone have become more stable, and the game design and balance can be considered in the long run. There has been too much negative news on Blizzard in the past year, and Hearthstone has a lot of revenue pressure, which has made the design team release itself and design a lot of supermodel cards - although Sara does not like the Stormwind version, the number of players in that version is indeed large, and the price is to overdraft the game life and inflate the strength of the cards.