Looks like we might have to do an episode about why HS can't actually get away with just nerfing stuff... -JP

@extrahistory

8 жыл бұрын

+Extra Credits It won't be for a while though...I sort of used HS as an example for a few of the upcoming scripts because I've been playing it...enough. -JP

@extrahistory

8 жыл бұрын

+Extra Credits Oh and yes, I know they've nerfed things before, but part of why they can't just do it willy-nilly is actually because of how they approached doing nerfs previously. -JP P.S. It's 10am and I've been up all night writing scripts. Imma stop commenting on my own thread now...

@insaninater5154

8 жыл бұрын

+Extra Credits I'm actually really looking forward to an episode on nerfing. It's an intense topic, but it, and reverse powercreep, totally deserve an episode!

@kasPWI

8 жыл бұрын

Do one on why they should be doing it instead.

@edwartexe

8 жыл бұрын

Can U talk about yu gi oh's power creep? Each release bumps the curve higher

Now for the episode on why they didn't simply improve these cards instead of making upgrades to pad the TGT packs.

@cloudsmakemehappy

8 жыл бұрын

+edfreak9001 Exactly. Ice Rager and Evil Heckler might not be true examples of power creep, but they're still poor design choices. Their argument that "releasing strictly better versions of unplayable cards is okay" might be acceptable if Arena didn't exist. As it is, having the old cards still in the pool is a slap in the face to Arena players. If Blizzard knew that Magma Rager and Booty Bay Bodyguard were laughably underpowered, they should have buffed them. Instead, they saw it as an opportunity to pad out the card count in TGT. That's a lazy, cheap, cynical design choice that completely ignores one of the greatest strengths of a digital format: being able to go back and fix poorly designed cards.

@xenoblad

8 жыл бұрын

+cloudsmakemehappy they don't really design with arena in mind. E.G. Bolster they may change in the future.

@ilyakipnis7853

8 жыл бұрын

+cloudsmakemehappy I'd be careful with that statement of "being able to go back and fix poorly designed cards". Because when devs *have* that option, they just go nerf-happy. Release awesome new card, get a ton of cash for it, and then nerf it, and wham, a bunch of people invested resources (whether money, or in-game currencies acquired through time), that are now worth much less.

@wiggumesquilax9480

8 жыл бұрын

+cloudsmakemehappy Pay-to-win is the monetization strategy of a lot of free-to-play online competitive games. You see a fair bit of it in World Of Tanks and War Thunder, and it absolutely dominates Mechwarrior Online. Technically, you can still win without regularly opening your wallet, but in these games trying to do so puts you at a big disadvantage. Top-tier stuff, fully kitted out, can require over a hundred hours of continuous grinding, and for each vehicle. Deliberately imposing obsolescence is just a way of prying open your wallet. As far as Blizzard is concerned, the best case scenario would be for no-one to be able to play Magma Rager or Booty Bay Bodyguard again.

@strykerten560

8 жыл бұрын

+cloudsmakemehappy It is entirely random what you draft in arena anyway, more varience in neutral cards doesnt change anything, it effects everyone equally. Arena is heavily altered by CLASS cards. This is why warrior is terrible in arena, while mage is great. Warriors common cards suck on average, while mages average cards are fantastic and diverse. You CAN draft a strong warrior deck, its just a far less consistent draft for warrior than mage Also, I dont think the game would be improved by removing diversity. If we just made magma rager a 5/2, sure, that buffs rager, but now we have less cards in the game. I want ALL the cards, I want bad magma rager and bad ice rager, I want em all. I dont think the game is improved by removing things. Especially given at any point blizz can release new crazy synergies. For example, there were a lot of 1 attack minions people wanted buff'd to have 2 attack, then they released hobgoblin and suddenly some of these 1 attack minions, even wisp, see play in a niche deck. If they had have just buff'd all those 1 attack minions we wouldnt have gotten hobgoblin, which would be a real lose In short, more cards best cards haha. The one argument I think is pretty solid is that new players only get the basic cards. I think this needs to be fixed through more ways to acquire cards though

That moment when you're so used to playing against Shredders and Dr Balanced that you don't really notice any possible overpowered-ness anymore...

@rageoftyrael

8 жыл бұрын

+LumosX Dr. Boom is annoying as crap, but that's probably because I don't have him, lol.

My question is, why not just patch the game? since all cards are digital, wouldn't it just be easy to release a balancing patch?

@Yemto

8 жыл бұрын

Thomas Davis I didn't think of that... sadly :/

@rapsody230

8 жыл бұрын

+Thomas Davis except that even if it is a Pay to Win you can manage to get common level cards pretty easily and for free, I would agree with you if the power creep was caused by legendary or epic cards, like fucking dr. Boom etc. So common level cards should be patched easily without a money loss from the company.

@Robert-so3oi

8 жыл бұрын

+Thomas Davis all of that is true but when blizzard release new cards in expansions none of them have been added to the basic set, they are all common or above so I don't see why they should be different

@fearsomeclarinet

8 жыл бұрын

+Thomas Davis Please never design a video game. Also please don't talk about "greedy, disgusting business practices" without doing ANY research on the game first. That is ignorant. The two NEW cards are still WAY below power curve for the game, AND they are common cards. You receive four common cards with every pack, and most players average a pack every 1.5 days. If you buy ANY pack, you have more than a 90% chance to get cards better than the NEW CARDS that are so "disgusting". It might be arguable that the cards are greedy if people were ACTUALLY buying the packs t get Ice Rager, but no one is. Since packs are random, for your "hypothesis" (if you can call it that) to work, people have to literally be thinking when they buy a pack "Man, I hope I get Ice Rager", but since no one is, these two cards specifically raise sales by ZERO PERCENT. I wish people didn't pretend to know what they were talking about. Also, to refute your "No card should be bad" idea (Genius by the way, you've really outdone yourself with this one, WHY AREN'T YOU DESIGNING GAMES ALREADY? /s) Please read these archive.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr5 tempostorm.com/articles/are-bad-cards-necessary-in-hearthstone Now, if you just decide "TLDR I'm just gonna continue pretending I'm right and pretend I didn't read because I don't have time for you peasants", then you have no right to continue talking out of your ass sir. Please, have a nice day.

@Saposhiente

8 жыл бұрын

+Yemto They can just adjust the old card, but they don't need to. Adding almost-good common cards to a set has little impact on the money they make or the game as a whole. Myself, I'd be really sad if they buffed Magma Rager instead of printing Ice Rager, because the Magma Rager meme has become part of the Hearthstone culture, and they shouldn't destroy that.

Blizzard should release some 'Ninjamo Turtleman' cards or something that get a defense bonus against Shredder.

@Anergyne

8 жыл бұрын

+grfrjiglstan The thing is about cards designed to counter overpowered cards is they also need to be at least moderately useful when not facing the overpowered card. :P

@ethanbuchanan7368

8 жыл бұрын

+grfrjiglstan That's dangerous. That means that for basically until power creep makes Shredder useless because of power creep, EVERY deck would need to have at least one of your Ninjamo Turtleman cards in order to deal with that one card, in every other situation your card wound need to be useless against any other card to stop it from being the best card because its an all around good card with one exception where its the best. However now that every deck must have this useless card in it, its really kind of rude to they players that your taking away the option of not having your card in their deck. Also who is to say that your one card even comes up at the same time as the Shredder. If your Turtleman is digitally at the bottom of your deck when Shredder shows its face, its going to cause its harm before Turtleman gets there to bow its head in shame that it missed its one opportunity of usefulness to take out shredder. Your on the right track of dealing with cards like that, but cards that specifically can only fight one other card is a bad idea.

@KorboQ

8 жыл бұрын

+Ethan Buchanan There's plenty of cards that do this already in Hearthstone. Black Knight, Harrison, Acidic Swamp Ooze, Rend, BGH...

@ethanbuchanan7368

8 жыл бұрын

+Holo the Wise Wolf I suppose I should have been a little more specific. All of the cards you named have a specific interaction with a mechanic a lot of cards provide. Since Taunt is really common to find in games Black knight is a good card because it offers unique mechanics but its still is reliable enough that it will be useful. In his Ninjamo Turtleman example it all that it does is target a single powerful card. The chances of those two cards both being played at the same time in the game is almost none. Like I explained Ninjamo would only be good in that match up, and be crap in every other. Having cards that target common mechanics work because you are almost guaranteed to have the chance to use your special mechanic. If they did add Ninjamo Turtleman or a similar card that is only good against one card, they would end up being impossible to balance, and would probably end up below the curve.

@KorboQ

8 жыл бұрын

Ethan Buchanan Black Knight really isn't that reliable. There's a reason it's not a staple anymore. Most decks have 2 or less taunts now.

Magic the Gathering's Standard format is actually a really nice way to fight power creep. It is one of the reasons the game is still alive in more than 20 years

@anxiety_elemental

8 жыл бұрын

they also have a ban list which helps a ton too. I also think that in general magic does a good job of keeping the creep in check. siege rhino might be dominating standard today, but it hasn't made an impact in legacy or vintage. as Maro says, today's magic cannot be beholden to yesterday's mistakes.

@JediMB

8 жыл бұрын

+Pedro Gusmão Considering the popularity of eternal formats, your collection hardly becomes obsolete. And there'll always be kitchen table casual Magic for cards that don't stay competitive in eternal formats.

@falconJB

8 жыл бұрын

MTG has actually had huge power creep problems they have just gotten better at managing it in the more recent sets.

@KorboQ

8 жыл бұрын

+RobertStyx Just play modern then.

@docterfantazmo

8 жыл бұрын

+Pedro Gusmão Although I get what you're saying, most Standard competitive decks I've seen will usually put you back about £100-150, which isn't too bad over a 3 year period. Also, most players don't buy HUGE amounts of boosters, they buy singles, the prices of which aren't dictated by Wizards directly. Not to mention that most shops won't mind if players use old cards that have rotated back in. Combine that with the resale value of certain cards in eternal formats and you could make at least a 3rd of your money back after these cards rotate out.

Why is adding a new card that is basically an improved version of an old, shitty card nobody uses acceptable? Just make the old card playable. This is not a printed tcg, you can do that. Also the heckler kills the shieldmasta which is a pretty good on-curve minion with balanced stats without dying at the exact same mana cost. If it can do that with its raw stats at the exact same manacost, that's pretty blatant powercreep.

@Poki3

8 жыл бұрын

+chris c My question exactly. This is not a physical card game, where something printed is hard to errata and has to be replaced by a new card. You can rebalanced cards in a patch. It's been done before several times. The end situation is that you have a bunch of cards that are just traps.

@maximeteppe7627

8 жыл бұрын

+chris c my thoughts exactly. But I think it was a way to quicly add to the number of new cards. The number of available cards is often a selling point of TGC.

@phobiandarkmoon

8 жыл бұрын

+chris c Here are a few arguments: 1) If Blizzard keeps doing that then you're going to have to check whether cards still do what they did before every time you come back to the game. This is bad for Casual players and also bad for new players looking up deck advise as things written that were true in the past are not necessarily still true. 2) Impact on Arena - removing the cards from the set does end up changing how arena with TGT cards work. This is far less of a problem admittedly. 3) The fact that evil heckler can kill and X/5 is pretty much mitigated by the fact that he dies to 4/X cards. Yes, it is better specifically vs Shieldmasta but it's considerably worse vs other cards

@scno0B1

8 жыл бұрын

+chris c Yeah. they should just have bumped up the old ones to ice rager and heckler levels

@phobiandarkmoon

8 жыл бұрын

+scno0B1 ... and doing that repeatedly is EXACTLY the kind of power creep that they're talking about in this episode

If that's the case with Ice Rager and Evil Heckler, why didn't Blizzard just buff Magma Rager and BBBodyguard? They easily could have.

@Loaderiser

8 жыл бұрын

+TheOtherWhiteNerd Seems that after the incident regarding the "nerf" on Unleash the Hounds, which was eventually followed by a nerf on an even more broken combo the card was involved in, Blizzard chose to not touch any existing cards in any way unless the card was actively killing the game. This of course means that old, underpowered cards pretty much have no chance of ever getting buffed up to playable levels. Also, from business standpoint, this allows the design team to fully focus on upcoming expansions which, unlike old existing cards that everyone probably already has several of, have to be bought and thus actually bring revenue. Seeing the Ice Rager and Evil Heckler does offer some hope of having other underpowered cards reincarnated in a new form in a future expansion, though.

@merdufer

8 жыл бұрын

+TheOtherWhiteNerd They could have buffed Magma Rager and BBBodyguard, sure, but they still would have printed Ice Rager and Evil Heckler. They have the standard MTG excuse: Draft/Arena. New sets appear more in Arena. They needed to maintain a certain amount of bad cards in those mana slots so that below average players can still differentiate themselves from total beginners. Also so that the best players can differentiate themselves from good players by picking those obviously horrible cards in the 1/1000 chance when they're actually the correct pick. I still think in reality it would just be an excuse given how much Arena just feels like an afterthought in Heartstone (in comparison to MTG). The real reason was just they needed filler but they felt people would be more upset with direct reprints given how few cards there are.

@logicalfundy

8 жыл бұрын

+TheOtherWhiteNerd I think Blizzard's standard response is that they don't want to make the players' decks feel drastically different if the player leaves the game for a while and comes back later. Nevermind that if a player leaves the game for a significant length of time, power creep plus different matchups and a new meta will make it feel different anyways.

@ireallyreallyhategoogle

8 жыл бұрын

+TheOtherWhiteNerd i guess 2 news cards means more money that's always the answer to why

@PandaJerk007

8 жыл бұрын

+logicalfundy That's not really a good explanation, I think any old player using those cards would be Happy to see their cards get a buff, if they even noticed the change at all. Instead everyone else just has the new set of better cards and leaves them in the dust.

Just started playing Hearthstone, so this was good timing!

@antonioscarparo7101

3 жыл бұрын

Same here lol

That was well done. Good job guys! Nice episode.

@polandball3076

6 жыл бұрын

SovietWomble hey look, its sovietwomble back when he still made vids!

@MattyQube

5 жыл бұрын

Since I started watching your videos you pop up commenting everywere XD

@jamesloweth7887

5 жыл бұрын

NESW nobody enjoys Soviet Womble

New episode! Does Hearthstone suffer from power creep? #ExtraCredits

@Mellion555

8 жыл бұрын

+Extra Credits Hahaha loved the "Work Complete" reference! It actually made me feel a little nostalgic about playing Warcraft 2 with my dad. >w

@Kloniq

8 жыл бұрын

+Extra Credits What about this new (kinda clever) deck: www.hearthpwn.com/decks/335884-duo-of-destruction ? And tell me please, why Blizzard just dont buff this 2 weak card, but instead he put this upgraded versions?

@CreativeWM_Personal

8 жыл бұрын

+Extra Credits Bushiroad in my opinion does a good job at avoiding power creep in their TCG games, let's take Cardight Vanguard for example. Each and every clan has unique abilities only found in that clan, Aqua Force uses the number of attacks you made that turn to activate various abilities such as power increases, standing your rearguard units, moving rearguards to the back/front row for extra attacks and standing the Vanguard itself (that's a big deal guys). Link Joker can lock units in place so they cannot be used by either player taking up a whole space on the playing field to power up and gain extra critical's (points of damage you can deal). Also the game is set up so you have to use weaker units to get to the stronger ones by riding the Vanguard which in turn lets you use cards with the matching grade level as you cannot use units with grades higher than your Vanguard (unless you superior call them with an ability). There more to the game then meet the eye but you should check it out yourselves as you learn so much from how the rules are set up to how the gameplay is structured as well.

@guygeva7375

8 жыл бұрын

+Kloniq That's really nice. What I had in mind for a rager is conceal and master of disguise. very nice deck you got there. Actually, in Noxious's video he said that it's ok to realese those cards if they open some sort of new deck option, like this.

@karachogm

8 жыл бұрын

+Extra Credits Why don't you make an episoe of the reoccurence of the Simulator genre? With DCS 2.0 on the Horizon, BoS and BoM, it's having some kind of comeback, those might not be games for the masses but they were never intended to be.

Pokemon TCG has been using power creep since its inception. The best cards from 20 years ago can't even stand a chance against average cards today.

@Bobvanksy

8 жыл бұрын

Didn't they stop printing some of the better trainers or changed them so you couldn't play them as often? Like Bill and Professor Oak

@relsre

8 жыл бұрын

+Gonxa Dec Very true. I haven't been following the game since the start of Gen V, but I do remember that the earliest generation cards (I, II) had much higher energy costs, trainer cards being much less effective, and the pokemon having less HP and less damaging/game-changing moves relative to newer cards (e.g. Gen IV). Matches went somewhat slower back then..

@Dramatic_Gaming

8 жыл бұрын

+Gonxa Dec I don't know if you can really call that power creep, though. More like the natural progression of a game. True the cards are a lot more powerful, but also look at how much the game has changed over the years. How many rules or effects have been added that completely changed the game? Comparing the game as it is nowadays to how it was 15-20 years ago is really tricky. Plus, look at how many cards back then with high power had massive drawbacks or absurd energy requirements. They practically punished you for trying to use your best cards. Most cards don't do that anymore unless it's in the form of chance (dice rolls, coin flips). One the one hand, you can look at it as power creep, but at the same time it's eliminating a mechanic that isn't fun & streamlines the game.

@kuru-chan6644

8 жыл бұрын

+Gonxa Dec Then again, a lot of the old Trainer cards are extremely good. Computer Search got reprinted and nerfed. Gust of Wind is the same as Pokemon Catcher, which got nerfed Bill got reprinted and nerfed etc.

@awxangel6781

8 жыл бұрын

+Gonxa Dec Pokemon tcg have done something similar to Magic. Made the Pokemon/Creatures stronger with more interesting effects while weakening the Trainers/Spells. Professor Oak, Computer Search, Gust of Wind, Bill are all Base Set pokemon trainers that would be completely busted today. In fact the first three were reprinted with drawbacks. Professor Oak and Gust of Wind are now "supporter" effects that can only be used once per turn, while Computer Search became one copy per deck. This isn't dissimilar to Magic's Ancestral Recall, Time Walk type of cards that have seen their effects placed on much more expensive cards, while there aren't many creatures from early Magic that would be remotely relevant today.

As a person who works mainly in the world of Collectible Card Games I'm very happy to see one of my favorite 'explanation' channels tackle stuff from my side of the game market, seeing them explain faucets of other genres of games is always interesting but when they hit my world I tend to be a whole lot more invested. Can't wait for next week's episode!

Creating more powerful cards to combat shredder isn't their only option to stop power creep. Since this is an online tcg, they have the ability to debuff existing cards which they've done in the past to great effect. It's a far simpler and cheaper option.

@elmor3085

8 жыл бұрын

+Straightupstrut But you can sell the new counter cards. Blizzard is a company after all.

@evilperson160

8 жыл бұрын

+Straightupstrut Blizzard as a company has always prioritised pushing new content over properly balancing existing content. This is why games like World of Warcraft turned into a complete mess in pvp.

@desislavvelchev8728

8 жыл бұрын

+Straightupstrut The thing about nerfing cards is they can't really reduce the stats on Piloted Shredder or Grim Patron (a card so OP it's still dominating 1 expansion later) without making the card completely unplayable, and they don't want that. An interesting thing they DID do with TGT though is add Darnassus Aspirant, a 2 mana creature that might spawn from the shredder that would reduce your max mana crystals by 1. So even though the shredder is still a really good card, it has a chance do backfire so hard, that you'd be playing from behind for at least 3-4 turns afterwards.

@beatall3

8 жыл бұрын

Desislav Velchev The thing is, they have nerfed supper op cards out of use. Remember when starving buzzard was a thing? Personally, I find patron to be a million times more infuriating than face hunter ever was.

@jaypenn491

8 жыл бұрын

+Desislav Velchev They could easily have shredder be 3 attack and still have a place in the game. It would still be able to trade with the board, and be a card that survives board clears. It still has strengths, but now also has weaknesses.

"There is never a reason to pick magma rager over ice rager in any deck." Fast forward about a year, and we have Steward of Darkshire and Divine Shield paladin decks that run Magma Rager. Oh how times change.

@icicleditor

4 жыл бұрын

ice rager probably cycled into wild tho

I know for a fact Blizzard has changed stats on cards before. Unviable cards and overloaded cards should be getting changed, not replaced by objectively superior cards or artificial counters injected to balance a gamechanger. Both are examples of power creep but one is an incredibly minor example and the other is quite significant, though both are damaging to the strategic diversity of the game and have incredibly simple fixes.

@ravenknightvincent2722

6 жыл бұрын

Imagine a set is like a deck of playing cards (the 52 one). Where the top card is the best card of the game, while the bottom one is the worst: -When you buff the worst card into the best, you move the bottom card to the top, then another card becomes the bottom card. -When you nerf the best card into the worst, you move the top card to the bottom, then another card becomes the top card.

all of blizzard was like " MOTHER FU**R , i guess we have to wait until next week "

Power creep?... doesn't seem to affect face hunters...

@Kamikazeray

8 жыл бұрын

+caramida9 Even with all those healing cards? like healing wave or flash heal?

@Redskull1411

8 жыл бұрын

+caramida9 Well...now for a face hunter is NOT optional doesn´t have Higmen or shredders....because now shamans can heal 14, priest can put 2/4 taunts in turn 2 and druids accelerate more fast now.... I almost notice that "pure facy hunters" have a LOTS of problems to have a win now....

@Bumbillion

8 жыл бұрын

+caramida9 Pure facehunter actually isn't that great anymore. People have had to start playing more mid-range or hybrid hunters due to TGT slowing down the meta-game.

@fearsomeclarinet

8 жыл бұрын

+caramida9 lol Facehunter hasn't been meta defining for months.

@HazZzur

8 жыл бұрын

+fearsomeclarinet Pretty much since patron became a thing I think...

A good example of this is in another popular cardgame, Yugioh Basically there's a ban list that keeps 'badly designed' cards out of the game if they completely dominate the metagame, and will be released after a few years from that banlist, with edited/less powerful effects, or when they don't at all impact the metagame anymore due to its power curve

@DraconicA5

8 жыл бұрын

+xXFireTheEagleXx Yugioh card is only popular because of manga and anime. Their power design is really f*ck up. Remember the time when 2500 atk is really high and most card are below 2000 atk on Playstation 1 ? Now most of the card in the new game are all about 2000 atk in starter pack on mobile.

@RobertoBlanco232

8 жыл бұрын

Attack really doesn't matter anymore in the game, it's all about effects A monster with 0 attack can have an amazing effect, while other big beaters have no effect at all Only some 'classic' vanilla monsters are still a little viable because they got specific support (Dark Magician and Blue/Red Eyes)

@GrandChaseHotStuven

8 жыл бұрын

+xXFireTheEagleXx Yugioh became a game of "how fast can I OTK my opponent?" And the answer is usually your very first turn. (See chicken race deck)

@DraconicA5

8 жыл бұрын

Moti Osmo That's the problem too. I only took 1 day to learn Heartstone or Boss Monster, it really easy to get into me. And the first time I played Yugioh on mobile, I have no clue what the hell I'm doing. It not really good for this new lazy generation. Edit: sorry, tagged the wrong person to comment. -_- But it not good for every generation, I'm kinda the first gen player, and I have no clue how to play the lastest gen. (I'm not play yugioh in real life btw)

@oboretaiwritingch.2077

8 жыл бұрын

+Draconic Not to be rude but that just shows that you don't know anything about how Yugioh the game has been handled ever since GX. Yes, the average attacks of higher leveled monsters had gone up, but the classic DM generation Yugioh cards have already been suffering the issues this very video addressed. For example let's put the monsters everyone knows, Dark Magician is a level 8 monster with ATK2500/DEF2100 compared to similarly level 8 Blue Eyes with ATK3000/2500 and both are vanilla monsters, meaning they don't have any additional effects to enhance their performance whatsoever(I know card supports for them exists, but we're talking about DM generation time). So apart from the fact that it's a protagonist's card, why would anyone ever bother using Dark Magician? And for similar issues, why would anyone use level 7 Red Eyes with ATK2400 when level 6 Summoned Skull with ATK2500 exists? Why would anyone uses level 4 Celtic Guardian at ATK1400 when level 4 Blood Vorse with ATK1900 exists? The issue had existed ever since day 1 and newer generations had fixed that by balancing out cards' competencies by their effects, if you weren't aware of this either through the actual game nor anime/manga, please don't try to act like it's f*cked up as you claimed, you're just coming off as extremely ignorant.

Just got through Extra History, Awesome! Loved every second. Starting the rest of your content toady super stoked. Thanks for the quality content.

Weird they didn't just nerf piloted shredder. Weird too they didn't buff Booty Bay Bodyguard and Magma Rager. It's a digital cardgame afterall. Only takes a patch not a reprint. They've done it before. Did it alot back in the game's beta phase.

@syferpolski4344

8 жыл бұрын

+TowerSavant If you are making something people bought with real money, there is going to be anger. Even though the probably left them selves this option open, it would leave them with quite a bit of bad PR and player complaints

@TowerSavant

8 жыл бұрын

When they've nerfed or changed cards in the past they've offered players the option to cost neutral disenchant that card. Seemed to work well. *shrugs* This topic fills me with so many shrugs.

@XryookuX

8 жыл бұрын

+TowerSavant Because they want more money, at the end of the day that's all it is. Digital fixes are stupidly easy, however, you make more money by having more cards that players need to collect to even out that power difference.

@ExBruinsFan

8 жыл бұрын

+Brulkin Von Randerkrut Crusher of Skulls BINGO. Developers of collectible games are some of the vilest people in gaming. Next to their fans. No better than street corner pushers.

@TowerSavant

8 жыл бұрын

Brulkin Von Randerkrut Crusher of Skulls That's a given. It's however easy to spot and be called out on. Which after a few Community Managing headaches just circles back around to me calling it Weird. You expend community support with antics like that. Seems a very minor thing to annoy people about, they were better off just changing the cards.

Evil Heckler and Ice Rager are still highly unlikely to ever see play, either. :D Edit: 3/5 was baseline stats for a 4 drop with an effect before Shredder existed, with the "perfect" stats before Shredder being the Yeti at 4/5.

Excellent episode. Topical situation on a difficult topic described in enough detail to understand the mechanics.

Thanks for the explanation! I look forward to your new content, always so entertaining and educational :)

This episode just SCREAMS Yu-Gi-Oh!

Oh...so this is what multi-part episodes are like when you aren't archive-binging...

I totally saw this episode coming! That's so cool! Thanks guys for making this!

Your video randomly popped up on my feed (probably because of all the hearthstone stuff I watch). Video was very good, put together very well. But I got most excited when I heard Vamo' Alla Flamenco at the end (FFIX is my favourite game of all time).

Evil Heckler and Ice Rager are mistakes in my opinion. Not because of power creep and not because they're *not* power creep but for the exact reason stated in the video: they're improved versions of old, rarely (if ever) used cards. That is, in it's own, special little universe, power creep too. Why bother with Magma Rager or Booty Bay Bodyguard ever if you have better options? Blizzard should've done something far simpler and far more effective on the overall scheme of things: Give BBB and Magma Rager the stats of their newer, better counterparts and instead add actually new cards. This not only fixes the problem with the cards and the unique universe power creep problem but allows for more new, interesting cards with possibly new effects or just new interactions with other cards. On the note of the Piloted Shredder. I wonder how dropping it's health to 2 would affect it's place in the game. Suddenly 1 cost minions can remove the big baddie for a 2 cost baddie. It'd likely just be better to drop it to a 3/3 and leave it at that. It still trades relatively well with low end creatures and it does spawn a 2 cost.

See also: Dr. Boom?

@kuru-chan6644

8 жыл бұрын

+GengarMarmalade Boom is not OpieOP, Boom is simply the only good neutral 7 drop

@rapsody230

8 жыл бұрын

+Yami -chan lol 8 potential damage plus a 7/7 and 2 1/1, totally not op...

@kuru-chan6644

8 жыл бұрын

rapsody230 Potential and Random. This is like calling Ragnaros or Ysera OP.

@VirtualMarmalade

8 жыл бұрын

My issue with Dr. Boom is that there aren't really any cards which trade even 1-for-1 with it on 7. Some 8+-mana cards are good enough, but even once you kill Boom the Bots can still get value. That seems like it's pretty far above the curve to me. But that's just my opinion.

@kuru-chan6644

8 жыл бұрын

GengarMarmalade It's true, but then you don't really see cards which trade one-for-one for Ysera, either. Rag kind of falls into the same category as Ragnaros except you get a Die, Insect instead of 2 1/1s. BGH, SW:D, Hunter's Mark, etc. all answer it, though not completely. I think cards above the 7 mana slot are all late game cards which are more difficult to handle, at the cost of being dead earlygame.

Great episode! The amount of details on that SPAS is what sold it for me.

Power creep is a really fascinating concept of gaming to me. This was an excellent episode. Looking forward to next week.

no mention of dr. balanced huh? Oh well...

@TheBlueToad

8 жыл бұрын

+Squirrel Knight That's because he's a completely balanced card. It's even in his name, "Dr. Balanced!"

@rabidmeese7601

8 жыл бұрын

+Luiz Vaz Dr . Boom is considered overpowered because his effect is a perfect mana curve creature who also summons 2 creatures that if they were there own cards would be considered extremely powerful themselves. When you pack three well curved minions into one package , while only accounting for the mana cost of one creature, you've got an imbalance.

@TheKrislaf

8 жыл бұрын

Luiz Vaz Well it's pretty much as balanced as the shredder, simply put: it is THE BEST 7-drop in the game in most circumstances. It's essentially a 7-mana 9/9 with an upside of dealing on average 4 damage between its enemies. It's also a nightmare to get rid of, as even the bgh cant truly kill it, and a boardwipe will in most cases not be enough. If you play it on a winning board you get even further ahead, and if you play it on a losing board you have a chance of making it even again. Overall, this is the number one legendary of hearthstone, no contest. A card you can put in any deck that have a late-game, without hesitation.

@armaniac661

8 жыл бұрын

+Squirrel Knight he is so balanced, there's no need to mention him :P

@reddragon8167

8 жыл бұрын

+Luiz Vaz Actually, both boombots are considered acceptable 1 mana minions in their own right. So it's kind of like, "9 mana 7/7, draw two one mana cars and play them, refill two mana crystals." Except it's better because you still have more cards in your deck and you can play it on turn seven instead of nine.

Clash royale devs obviously have no concept of power creep and just make loads of random, imperfectly imbalanced cards.

Great video, guys! It sums up a lot of card games, which is nice :)

Watching this is 2018. Even if Piloted shredder was in standard, nobody would complain about it because there are so many other cards to complain about. I’m looking at you Ultimate Infestation.

Or maybe Blizzard could just fucking nerf, the Piloted Shredder

@thisguyisabeast6874

7 жыл бұрын

z3onn it doesn't need to It's not that powerful

Good thing they didn't pull a Yu-Gi-Oh rip polymerization, ritual, and sacrifice deck.

@MolotowCocktail24

7 жыл бұрын

Kornelius Heydrich there is so much support which makes polymerization so much better also, there are strong ritual decks. infact, a deck called nekroz crushed the meta 2015. but yeah, powercreep is kinda strong anyway.

@soschar2050

7 жыл бұрын

Have you even been playing Yugioh recently? Monarchs were Tier 1 last format.

@blankxx0009

7 жыл бұрын

yugioh is the perfect example of the result of continually raising the power of cards. they recently announced rule changes to where in one particular point the amount of life is increased from 8000 to 12000. yugioh by going this route will continually need to change it's rules as the cards can't stay at a set power and the game naturally takes fewer and fewer turns to win. soon they'll be up to 20,000 life. imagine hearthstone giving you 50 life instead of 30 because the cards became too powerful where before you could play a 4 powered creature for 4 cost but then there comes 10 powered creatures for 2 cost. that's yugioh.

@soschar2050

7 жыл бұрын

Blank xx000 That was just a rumor.

@blankxx0009

7 жыл бұрын

Charr it will most likely be confirmed and will be a record to tcg developers of what not to do if they want their game to stay balanced in the long run.

Looking forward to the next episode. I seriously asked that question right before you addressed it at the end.

Fantastic! a refreshing and inteligent point of view in a discusion so satureted in the last month

Maybe it isn't power creep but its atleast bad design, in my opinion

@MrJackMTama

8 жыл бұрын

+佳楽冴子夜 I feel like that is only half of the reason behind these two cards though, I honestly think, and get your tin foil hats people, that blizzard is making these cards as part of the new set in order to make more money by adding "corrective cards" rather than buffing them.

@RipOffProductionsLLC

8 жыл бұрын

+Jessy Lloyd if they had buffed/nerfed the over-powered/under-powered cards people would have complained about how they then had to restructure their deck to compensate for the changes, new cards are easier for them to except, even if the results are the same. Sort of like how some stores always have items perpetually on sale, never selling at "full price" because it tricks people into excepting the actual price as a "deal" or "bargain".

@FreezyPenguin

8 жыл бұрын

***** I don't think that's a good excuse.

@FreezyPenguin

8 жыл бұрын

***** Yea it might be, I personally don't like that design at all tho, feels like you're just trying to milk your costumers for money at that point.

@eila2088

8 жыл бұрын

+elrognol Magic can't change cards after the fact like Blizzard can.

I think we need an episode about why Blizzard is releasing new cards for balancing instead of just buffing/nerfing. Unless it's just a cash-grab, which I'd like it to not be, but it could be

These were really nice insights, thankyou.

Very well put together!

I thought power creep was just another name for a face hunter

Why was Piloted Shredder used as power creep and not Dr. Boom? Auchenai and Water Elemental are as powerful, Dr. Boom has no competitors.

@rapsody230

8 жыл бұрын

+Imperios Because when a legendary hard to get card is a powercreep is a "limited" effect and it is mostly destructive of the ranked and pro environment, a common card that power creeps the game is destroying the ENTIRE game power level. A common card is easily obtainable so everyone will take that instead of basically any 4-drop.

@kuru-chan6644

8 жыл бұрын

+rapsody230 You sound like Legendaries are not accessible. While Dr. Boom isn't the most overpowered thing, it's easy as hell to get - 1600 dust.

@nmmeswey3584

8 жыл бұрын

+Yami -chan Yeah, it's easy, just sacrifice other 4 legendaries or like a billion commons

@Louigi36

8 жыл бұрын

+Imperios Exactly because Boom has no competitors it's harder to judge that aspect. Dr. Boom didn't really push a line because, for all practical purposes, there wasn't a line to begin with. Neutral 7 drops just didn't exist in constructed, and the class 7 drops that were played before Boom are still being played about as much after Boom, so he didn't really change that part either. That's why he's a bit of a difficult case to analyse. Who would you compare him to?

@nmmeswey3584

8 жыл бұрын

Flocci Raganros is worst thanb Dr. Boom, and hes a legendary and has higer cost

Well done, I've always loved these videos.

@gambit133

8 жыл бұрын

+Alex ! You've earned my vert rare subscribe.

Whoa, why am I not already subbed to you? Nice video!

I hope next weeks topic will take Yu-Gi-Oh as an example, because it already would have been a better example for this episode.

@ViolacTrough

8 жыл бұрын

Agreed.

@MrFAD11

8 жыл бұрын

+Gatz42 They wanted to talk specifically about those two cards and how "they are not powercreep". And as far as i know Evil heckler and Ice rager does not exist in Yu-Gi-Oh.

@nurluskilevi8585

8 жыл бұрын

+Gatz42 noooo, Yu-Gi-Oh (i lov it dont get me wrong i play it) has been hit WAYYYYYYYYY too hard by the power creep without having any chance of coming back without a major change that will almost reset the game, hearthstone is a lot more subtle for this and has been keeping power creep out till now

@FoamTech1

8 жыл бұрын

+Gatz42 Yugioh is intentional powercreep more so than anything else. It became quite apparent with the new mechanics and certain archetypes that have come out.

@MrGshinobi

8 жыл бұрын

+Ehren Wong Funny because pretty much all of the new mechanics work well with older cards, like Pendulums, or xyz or synchros and etc as they're not archtype specific for the most part. Throw a tuner in a deck and it can now access synchros, throw a few pendulums in your favourite vainilla deck and now you can pendulum summon. Years ago, it was intentional for the most part, but the game has improved drastically since then.

Cool episode - there are some interesting points. But look at in from another perspective - as the game designer already told in many interviews there have to be "bad" cards for beginners. These cards have to exist for giving new players an understandig of which cards are bad and good. And its cool to get new, better cards. Your explanaitions about power creeps are absolutly correct, but its not bad to have some cards that are not meta anymore and played by "nobody".

I love the episodes that are about power creep, it is a very interesting concept and I love to see how it impacts game's growth.

Love seeing videos dealing with analogue design topics, even if in a cursory manner. T/CCG design is fascinating thanks to all the moving parts and constant growth, but MtG seems to be the only real big dog to look to for lessons, and now maybe Hearthstone.

clash royale has balance changes which are, I'm my opinion better than adding more cards

@TheSonicZero

7 жыл бұрын

Gautam Iyer yup :)

Why can't the designer just nerf the OP cards? Seems a lot easier than just accepting that a shitload of cards are now literally worthless.

@kuru-chan6644

8 жыл бұрын

+Bobo The Talking Clown This is Blizzard we're talking about.

@Jensaw101

8 жыл бұрын

+Bobo The Talking Clown If they made a habit of changing cards that already exist, players would have to double check every card in their deck before every match. Who knows if the card is no longer viable for their strategy, because something changed overnight?

@juanmoreno6591

8 жыл бұрын

+Yami -chan it's actually a playerbase problem, most of the "hardcore" players spend a lot of time making their decks as perfectly tuned to their style as they can, if Blizzard sudenly changed cards then they have to go back and see how does it affects their deck, wich could force them to rebuild from scratch. Now I'm not saying that it's a bad thing that they nerf/buff a particular card if it completely breaks the game or is totally useless, but if they "just nerf the OP cards" that would suck not just for players who use them, but for players who build their decks to counter them, and it would cause players to leave the game

@kuru-chan6644

8 жыл бұрын

Juan Moreno I'm kidding .w.

@ilyakipnis7853

8 жыл бұрын

+Bobo The Talking Clown because unless the balancing team are absolute GODS at balancing, when you say "nerf the OP cards", well, the question is this: "OP compared to what?". So you nerf the current OP. What then? Something else will be OP. Nerf that too? Then something *else* will be the best. When does it end? And, along the way, if you have a free-to-play card game, for those playing for free (or spending little) and dedicating all their resources to acquiring those few powerful cards so they can be competitive as soon as possible, what do you tell them? "Oh, I'm sorry, I just screwed over your one good strategy."? Well, okay, screw you, I'm going to go find another game rather than fall for your bait and switch BS of selling one thing, and then taking it away after I provided you content by being a player in your game, or even provided you money. This is why balancing should be done VERY rarely in CCGs. Because when you balance in CCGs, you affect what people spent money on. If I sold you a car that has 40 miles per gallon, and then one day it went 20 miles per gallon, there'd probably be a class-action lawsuit!

Card games are fascinating, I'd love to see more episodes on card game design :D

Great content, you earned a new subscriber.

I feel like this video treated hearthstone like a normal trading card game instead of one that is online. Power creep could easily be avoided by nerfing said cards, but blizzard stubbornly refuses to take advantage of one of the best parts of their platform. They would rather keep blatant powercreep in the game than just buff or nerf cards. It's horrible game design IMO.

@thisguyisabeast6874

7 жыл бұрын

snowron6 there are no power creep cards

@League____

7 жыл бұрын

JOanh oeeter 1 year old comment LUL

@ravenknightvincent2722

6 жыл бұрын

Imagine a set is like a deck of playing cards (the 52 one). Where the top card is the best card of the game, while the bottom one is the worst: -When you buff the worst card into the best, you move the bottom card to the top, then another card becomes the bottom card. -When you nerf the best card into the worst, you move the top card to the bottom, then another card becomes the top card.

Hahahaha. You should see how bad it’s gotten in 2021!

I didnt not expect to hear " *booty bay* bodyguard " in a serious video

I remember a similar scenario in a table-top game called Heroscape. Fun game, but at one point, they released a unit called Major Q9. This unit had quite good defensive power, incredible offensive power, and while expensive to bring to the army, would almost always kill his point cost. Combined with another unit that had existed since the beginning of the game that added extra defense, and this guy walked across the battlefield shooting everything in his path. For a while afterwards, it felt like every set coming out was trying to counter this guy in some way.

Alternatively, just nerf the Shredder. Oh wait, that would be intelligent. Won't find that at Blizzard.

@ravenknightvincent2722

6 жыл бұрын

Imagine a set is like a deck of playing cards (the 52 one). Where the top card is the best card of the game, while the bottom one is the worst: -When you buff the worst card into the best, you move the bottom card to the top, then another card becomes the bottom card. -When you nerf the best card into the worst, you move the top card to the bottom, then another card becomes the top card. I never see the reason to nerf powerful cards because another will take its spot.

If you want to see real power creep, play Yugioh.

actually I discovered this channel because of that old episode on power creep... I was a hard core magic player back then... those were some awesome days :')

Yay for FF9 outro music! ^_^ Always so happy to see or hear anything from that game.

Just stop talking about hearthstone already. It's a bad game and no one wants to hear about it.

Now, what we need is an in-depth episode about how Path Of Exile does balance. Wait, what am I saying? We'd need a whole SERIES for that!

Great video man! Thanks!

This was great...I really do want Side Quest back though. Great work as always though. Love you guys.

Good episode! Keep it up!

When you get an Hearthstone ad for a video wrapped around hearthstone

Loved the music at the end

Dat Vamo' alla Flamenco cover. Thanks Extra Credits for showing me Worlds Apart

excellent explanation - very rationally said

Great episode! :)

As I'm currently designing my own TCG (Just among me and my friends, I'm not advertising here), this was a VERY useful video to stumble upon. I found it while looking up Hearthstone matches so I could refresh myself on how the game treats the first turn, lol. I'm taking the things I find most fun about other popular TCGs and applying it to my own game so that it's hopefully pretty fun to play. I would hate to put all this work into this, and then have it stop being a thing among my friends after only two weeks of me creating it. But yeah, I have a LOT of testing to do... Chances are, I've created some overpowered cards, and this video (And probably that next one, which I'm about to watch) has given me a few tools that I need to identify WHEN a card is too good.

Nice outro Tune, brings back memories

Yugioh:the what curve? *proceed to pendulum xyz synchros their entire deck in one turn*

I love Extra Credits! I want more than 1 episode a week. I can dream. :D

LMAO THE NEW DESCENT OF DRAGONS EXPANSION

The most interesting example of some sort of creep is the one in League of Legends' metagame. With every new champion released or reworked, the developers implement new mechanics and interactions with that champion's kit that provides a unique experience mostly different from any other champion in the game. It is quite easy to tell the difference between a champion made during the beta, and one that was released very recently, just by looking at their kit. Every new champion now has more utility, more mechanics, more outplay potential, and is generally more fun to play.

Something that I don't get is why doesn't Blizzard update the piloted shredder to have different stats?

I learned something new today. I never knew about "power creep"!

I think its worth mentioning that beyond adding cards which countered the shredder, Blizzard also added dangerous cards which the shredder could drop, such as Doomsayer, which automatically kills itself and all other minions.

what a cliffhanger. can't wait for the next episode.

I took a special interest in this one because I'm designing a paper & pencil RPG designed to be easily and regularly expandable (going to be universal eventually and distributed online). Looking forward to next week!

I love how game design is also applicable to business strategy. the power creep is equivalent to dumping prices. that's why companies only compete on price will fail in the long term if they can't get the costs low enough.

Super cool, thanks!

nice work lads

the ad before this video was for hearthstone. how fitting.

Reminds me of the baseline 4-star normal monster cards in Yugioh. When normal monsters(monsters without any effects/strings attached) with 1900 ATK came out, all the 1800 ATK normal monsters immediately became pretty much obsolete for most decks.

I honestly laughed out loud at the graphic for "The More Interesting Power Creep." :-D The "Accidental Power Creep" graphic was funny too.

Great episode! I think you should look into MtG and how they manage to acutally keep power creep in check fairly well...

Great job! Something very similar happened in the Pokemon TCG to the point where the format is ruled by 180 hp pokemon (with the strongest deck on,y having 80 hp in the day)

Before you guys talk about Ice Rager and Evil Heckler, I'm guessing you're going to say that they fit more along the power curve because the old cards, Booty Bay Bodyguard and Magma Rager lie so far below the power curve.

@mortalpokemon60

8 жыл бұрын

Un-clever comment isn't clever.

@deadmuffinman

8 жыл бұрын

+TheGreatRakatan 2:36 they did

@deadmuffinman

8 жыл бұрын

+TheGreatRakatan 2:36 they did

Sort of reminds me of another game that's been brought up here a few times before: World of Tanks. Toward the beginning, heavy tanks with strong armor and high alpha damage guns were generally the way to go. DPM suddenly trumped alpha with the inclusion of top tier mediums and tank destroyers as well as the T110E5. Making "premium" high-penetration ammo available for larger amounts of regular credits then also meant that most tanks could punch through the toughest armor they could see, so heavies that relied on their armor fell into a rough spot (and still are depending on who you talk to) as well as making DPM even more important. French tanks and the widespread introduction of autoloading clips brought higher burst damage that would also trump the standard dpm or high alpha, especially with how mobile they were. The French at least were held back with below average gun handling characteristics. The absolute worst has been the Waffentrager E-100, the second German tier 10 tank destroyer. It had the worst stealth, and a very large and poorly armored turret, but the only thing that mattered was the gun. It was incredibly accurate and had high penetration all coupled with a 6 round autoloader. It could clip out just about everything it could face without much worry. The only question would be if it could find cover for long enough to reload, where it could then do it all again. A counterargument toward the powercreep would be the changes that have been made. Penetration mechanics based on the angle of the hit has been tweaked and the overpowered tanks themselves have usually been nerfed (e.g. Waffle-100 losing a shell on it's 128mm autoloader clip and much worse gun handling). Underperforming tanks have also been buffed, so the question I tend to come up with is that it could be considered powercreep where the underperformers are buffed harder than the overperformers are nerfed, leaving with a net increase in the power curve. Wargaming is now pushing their new World of Warships game out, so it'll be interesting to see how things pan out with another game that has plenty to add and balance in the future.

Brother linked me this vid. For a while i thought it was Kripparian video but lack of "heyguyshowitsgoingkripparianhere" proved otherwise :P

Speaking as an Android: Netrunner player (as I believe Dan is as well), this was informative and interesting. I feel that for the most part, A:NR has avoided too harsh power creep--their problems tend to be more in the "lack of consistency of rules and templating so that intended interactions don't get lost to bad wording," and relatedly, "rules decisions made that clearly undermine the purpose of a card in context," variety--but there's no doubt that the lessons here apply. Interestingly, one option Fantasy Flight Games has taken is the rotating-set philosophy. Eventually (and we're a few years away from this), some cards will no longer be legal at the highest, most competitive (and therefore most concerned with power creep) levels. That can help reindex the curve, if one is willing to wait.

So Mabinogi has been going for 11 years, and it undeniably has had some crazy power creep, where at the start of the game's run, it was difficult to max out a single skill, let alone all of them, and now we have players who's levels are measured in increments of ten thousand and their highest damage numbers are measured in increments of hundreds of thousands. However, the game has still been alive in Korea and the world as a whole for 11 years and counting now as the power creep has been handled in a way that makes the game more interesting with each bump. Every time new content is released, player avatars get a little bit stronger, but the content itself has become that much harder to clear as well. The most recent director in the game has even created a sort of adjustable-training arena where you can go and fight some incredibly difficult content that is ridiculously rewarding to complete if you can actually complete it (and despite the overbearing strength of the playerbase, the way it is set up it is both very clearable but also very dangerous and is constantly throwing the player in very real danger of losing. Dying in a solo run where you have no teammates to revive you equates to losing one of your three daily runs, which is a significant loss.) Effectively, they made power creep a part of their game design, and it even works for the lore of the player characters (A strange, super human being that has come from another dimension that has the power to learn and grow at incredible rates compared to "normal" people (normal being the NPC's))

One Way to get around this kind of power creep is rotation, like in the case of Magic: The Gathering. Every now and then the compative formats rotate, which means, that old cards become illegal while cards are getting released. This helps to free up the design space beneath certain "format staples", because they become illegal after a time. Although, Mark Rosewater, the Head Designer of M:tG explains in one of his podcasts which he does on the wizards website, the time when they introduced Type 2. That was a format where just a friction of the cards where legal. The player uproar was quite high, because you could not play with the cards you have bought a year ago. But for the long term survival of the game it seems that it was the right call.

Thank you, Extra Credits, for providing a calm and argumentative explanation on power creep in HS to all the haters and ragers that are too quick to judge. Of course, I'm sure they'll find a way to insist on their 'well defended point' somehow, that's how the internet works after all