Hearthstone Rage Break

Here we are on yet another Friday and I am going through posts of what I think should be this week's Reader Post. Now I am often accused of picking posts that go in line with my thinking or never go against some of my favourite games or companies for "reasons". With that in mind while I don't take the extreme approach to the subject that Rehtael does in this week's post. I do agree with his thoughts on nerfs and bug fixes. So as this post is a bit of a rage rant it is well thought out and a good read.

I needed to express something, and that the Hearthstone dev team finds new ways to disappoint me every time an update comes out.

I've been playing since closed beta and have been an active member of the bug report forums.  I'm just tired of it. I'm tired of developers that don't seem to listen to the community, that spend ages working on patches that break more things than they fix, not addressing the quality of life issues that have been brought up thousands of times, (seriously, more than 9 deck slots will NOT confuse anyone who isn't already very easily confused) and overall, it feels like they're just out of touch with the community.

And no, this isn't about card balance, at least, not primarily. This is about every time an update or a patch comes out, in adds another game-breaking feature, such as charge not working, Nozdormu burning into opponents' turns, tracking not causing the timer to go off, and that's just naming a few. Knowing that they're pushing tournaments without first addressing bugs like these is a huge problem. The lack of a better reconnection feature, the lack of a better collection sorting system, the little things that players have been asking for, for years are just adding up and what was a few minor complaints have grown substantially over time, and seem to be ignored. 

It's not that I think that Team 5 is lazy, or doesn't care, or is just stupid, I just don't know what the case is that causes patches to be so slow in the presence of some really bad issues. And I respect the team for all they do, I know that they have a VERY difficult job, I myself am a game developer for a small indie company, but I just can't play this game anymore.

Something simple like letting people chose their card pack from the arena might pull me back in, but for someone who took a hiatus and fell behind, they've made it horrifically difficult to gain new cards. (I've been free to play since CLOSED beta. Refused a Golden Gelbin just on principle.)

And the "tactical nuke" approach to nerfing cards has killed some of my favorite decks. For example, Starving Buzzard. I was one of the pioneers of the Buzzard Hound deck, and the solution to fixing that deck was so VERY simple. All they had to do was change Buzzard's text to read: Whenever you play a beast, draw a card. But no. We get a useless 5-cost 3-2. Meanwhile, Warrior is in a place now where it's possible to deal 36 damage in one turn from hand with an empty board. (That's happened to me, I'm sure it's happened to others.)

The solution to bringing the weak cards in line would be taking advantage of the unique online platform that Hearthstone has. You could have buffed Booty Bay Bodyguard and Magma Rager. Why would this be better? Because arena exists. There are enough garbage arena cards without some being objectively awful, and instead of making two new cards which still aren't going to see any play, you could have included other minions which would have had a more meaningful impact on the game.

All in all, I love Hearthstone. It's just too painful to experience these days. The questing system at the moment punishes players for not playing multiple classes, which really doesn't need to be the case.

At any rate, that's enough from me.

Was I not right?

Enjoy your weekend everyone!