Regarding Nerfing and Changing Economics | Forums

[kaifeiyu]

Weak cards
I can kinda understand why weak cards are not buffed. This may generate new OP cards. Also it will cause the cards to change a lot and it is nice to just have a small list of changed cards each expansion. On the other hand, I think the sets need to contain more playable cards. HoN had about 35 cards that were frequently played. That number is just too low. GB did a little better there with about 50. I understand weak cards are needed for situational decks, to prevent power creep and to hide gems, but do we really need so much of them? Ideally, I would like to see sets having 60 playable cards.

Mtg has 70% chaff and only 30% useful cards in their set, most likely DOC started with this assumption and implemented it in HON

[Xyx0rz]

MtG's argument for putting so much chaff into their boosters is "because Limited". They say Limited is better with a more varied power distribution. I personally think they could make Limited work with a flat power distribution, so it's just corporate greed, but at least they have a reason.

[M0rw47h]

MtG's argument for putting so much chaff into their boosters is "because Limited". They say Limited is better with a more varied power distribution. I personally think they could make Limited work with a flat power distribution, so it's just corporate greed, but at least they have a reason.

You need bad cards to punish for bad drafting...

[mayar21]

(...)
Weak cards
I can kinda understand why weak cards are not buffed. This may generate new OP cards. Also it will cause the cards to change a lot and it is nice to just have a small list of changed cards each expansion. On the other hand, I think the sets need to contain more playable cards. HoN had about 35 cards that were frequently played. That number is just too low. GB did a little better there with about 50. I understand weak cards are needed for situational decks, to prevent power creep and to hide gems, but do we really need so much of them? Ideally, I would like to see sets having 60 playable cards.

Probably it depends how we define "weak" but I have a different opinion on Heart of Nightmares, I think it was very good expansion, containing some very interesting and mostly well-balanced cards. I agree that not many of them are seen in T1 decks but that doesn't mean they're weak, it's just that T1 decks consist of mostly OP and very good cards, so fine cards or even good cards (like Lotus Empire Guard) are left out. But the problem lies in OP cards not in the'fine cards'. From Griffin Bane more cards are seen in T1 decks but that's beacuse there was simply many v. strong or even OP cards there. And now from what little I saw of the newest expansion we might have a similar problem with Sins of Betrayal (many cards that will probably end up auto include in decks). Back to the topic - I think more nerfs is needed to flat out the gap in power level between the cards. Some buffs could be used too, but in general it's easier to nerf this 5-10% of auto include cards than buff the vast majority of 'fine' cards. On the other hand I can understand the anger of new players who spent all of their saved WCs on a playset of uniques that were nerfed. Refund system would be ideal if possible technically.

[banduan]

well, started of well... but last few pages had a few opinions I just can't agree with, on both sides of the argument.

Soooo many crazy statements. Should I even start?

[kaifeiyu]

Probably it depends how we define "weak" but I have a different opinion on Heart of Nightmares, I think it was very good expansion, containing some very interesting and mostly well-balanced cards. I agree that not many of them are seen in T1 decks but that doesn't mean they're weak, it's just that T1 decks consist of mostly OP and very good cards, so fine cards or even good cards (like Lotus Empire Guard) are left out. But the problem lies in OP cards not in the'fine cards'. From Griffin Bane more cards are seen in T1 decks but that's beacuse there was simply many v. strong or even OP cards there. And now from what little I saw of the newest expansion we might have a similar problem with Sins of Betrayal (many cards that will probably end up auto include in decks). Back to the topic - I think more nerfs is needed to flat out the gap in power level between the cards. Some buffs could be used too, but in general it's easier to nerf this 5-10% of auto include cards than buff the vast majority of 'fine' cards. On the other hand I can understand the anger of new players who spent all of their saved WCs on a playset of uniques that were nerfed. Refund system would be ideal if possible technically.

Lotus Empire Guard is a metagame fail, if soulreaver didn't exist, if shooters don't care about the cards at all, then it might be a good card. At the moment you have meta game standards which should be kept, not only in card choice but also in play style. e.g anything which have a high cost (above 4) better have an immediate effect or you lose out to soulreaver, you can't block fire magic user unless you have more then 3 health then their attk because of fire bolt. don't bunch up 3 health guys vs water, don't play multiple 3 health guys vs insect swarm, don't have as many 3 health guys in your deck. All metagame constraints, because such cards exists and are played you are constrained to what you can and cannot do.

I don't think they should nerf any cards, but to create more new ways to play. Make the game non-transitive please. Rock is OP vs Scissors but that's only cause paper haven't been printed yet. So instead of nerfing rock, print paper

[mayar21]

Lotus Empire Guard is a metagame fail, if soulreaver didn't exist, if shooters don't care about the cards at all, then it might be a good card. At the moment you have meta game standards which should be kept, not only in card choice but also in play style. e.g anything which have a high cost (above 4) better have an immediate effect or you lose out to soulreaver, (...)

Well, he's immune to Soulreaver, Enthrall etc., so he's already better than 70% of the other 5+/6+ cards, plus nice abilities, decent body, a good card in my book, not great, certainly not OP, but decent enough.

edit:
while I may sound critical, at the same time I have also sympathy for the devs, because they have a hard job. Players demand that there will be more and more playable cards so the devs try to meet this demand, sometimes running the risk of making OP cards (like with Ice Spear, between the cost 1 or 2 they decided to give it 1 cost to make sure the card is playable, but it ended up probably OP). But balancing is not as easy as some people think, you can easily see it for yourself by reading the reviews of past sets, in most cases peoples ratings and predictions were way off. Check GB reviews for example, Bloodsnake Shaman got only mildly warm or even average ratings at the release, while ending up the most OP card in the set. At the time people were raving about Spider Guard as the best creature of the set (not to say that it's a bad creature but certainly nowhere near the power level of BS Shaman as it turned out to be). Even for the new set there are already some differences in opinions, for example one of the reviewers put Bound Succubus in tier 3 (out of 6) while others see it as the candidate for the first nerf. Those differences only show that it's not as obvious as some think.