How would you balance a video game?

How would you balance a video game?

Buff the weak class? Nerf the strong class? Take turns?

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>Sup Forums
>balancing

by modelling the game rules and running statistical analysis you fucking piece of shit pleb

There's no sense in modeling game rules unless you have an AI that can play as well as a human, which you don't for Hearthstone, so save your inane blabbering for another one of your reaction face threads.

Make everyone the same.
Fags will always find an excuse to cry.

>priest will always be shit

That fucking card is so overpowered what the fuck.

>2 mana for cycle and something that a 0 mana card can do
>OP

ha
ha
ha

>people looked at this card and said "yep looks good"
what were they thinking

>play high ranks
>it's all the same ladder-climbing aggro decks
>play low ranks
>the metagame is highly diverse and every game feels different, due to not everyone having all the best cards

>i can't come up with an AI therefore one can't exist

First thing i would do is remove any and all one shots if its a pvp game

>Another fucking 4-mana 7/7
Get your shit together, Blizzard

why does Blizzard hate priest? Who looked at this card and thought it was even remotely playable?

Agreed trying to hit legendary ruined the game for me. Everyone had meta decks and there were no surprises. Every move was predetermined if you knew the decks and basically the wins go to whoever draws better.

>low ranks
win/loss is about 50/50
>high ranks
win/loss is about 70/30

You forgot that 0 mana card can target enemy creatures as well as friendly minions.

nice fancard m8 go fuck you're self.

>tfw no custom card threads in forever
>never get a chance to post my shitty 'lore friendly' 40k cards

a real shame

I get what they wanted to do with this.

They wanted to give Priest another card like Power Word Shield, a card that is an absolute staple in 100% of Priest decks, but to prevent Purify from becoming a card that is a staple in absolutely 100% of Priest decks, they upped the cost to 2 so that Priests aren't allowed to have effectively 26 card decks.

TL;DR: Purify would've been perfectly balanced at 0 or 1 cost, but Blizzard doesn't love Priest enough to allow that.

lol at that card
why does priest need 6 silences, no one buffs anything

wait why does this cost 2 mana? That's fucking terrible.

Shame that wording doesn't work like that in HS, mtg-friend.

What the flying fuck was Blizzard thinking with this card

youtube.com/watch?v=QSRFiVXjVL8

lmao

How do we fix priest?

That's not an actual card, is it?

no. its not that great of one anyway. gives your opponent a clean board if used at 10, and priests have plenty of other aoe options for less mana

>it can exist hence it exists

are you stupid

Trying to deliberately and forcefully balance the game, I think, is a fool's errand, and leads to boring design. Conversely, making very asymmetric content often leads to just as good if not better balance if you allow feedback effects to run their course (for example, in free-for-all game the strongest players/factions/whatever tend to be knocked down a couple of notches by temporary alliances, asymmetric factions enjoy different kinds of map features so they can be balanced indirectly through map design as seen in Brood War, sufficiently distinct and unique strengths tend to ensure a spot in co-op/team-based games, you can implement solutions outside the scope of the game itself like point compensation for White player in Go due to Black's first move advantage etc). There's even the wild option of not trying to make every game "e-sports" with ranking systems, sponsored tournaments and such like, and generally trying to discourage players from powergaming and instead trying to promote experimentation and coming up with novel strategies and tactics such that "perfect balance" doesn't even need to be a consideration.

However, if I had to take up a task of balancing the game, assuming I'm not allowed to go as far as implementing my favoured design philosophy, I'd go Icefrog route and gradually apply minuscule buffs and nerfs to stuff most used at the highest level of human play (and not necessarily in areas that are perceived to be a problem: it's fine for extremely hard counters to exists for example if they are sufficiently difficult to deploy).

It would still be shit at 1, and even at 0. It can't target enemy minions AND you actually need a minion on board to even use it. That's right, you can't even fucking cycle it if you don't have a minion on board. This is THE WORST card they have ever printed, bar none.

You can't even play it with Pyro if you have nothing else on the board which is like the biggest reason cheap spells are good on priest.

Are there different teams for each class or something?
Did Priest get stuck with the double-scoop of retard team? Its cards are so consistently fucking worthless.

But priest being shit is okay because there always has to be a least played class and through rigorous internal testing we've determined there's a top tier priest deck no one has just figured out yet :^)

-t Blizzard

As a player who's been playing for a while, I agree that Priest should be better, but god help me I never want to see them be a top pick again. Vanilla priests were fucking cancer, and a lot of the cards they've added since then would only make them even worse to play against if they ever got any real buffs.

Remove silence from the game. It is harmful to the health of Hearthstone.

>Buff the weak class? Nerf the strong class? Take turns?

Balance in games like Hearthstone or Street Fighter is a zero-sum game and it literally makes no difference whether you buff X or nerf everybody except X. You just do whatever is convenient and requires the least work at the time.

However: You should be constantly aiming at an ideal situation where all classes are in balance. Not like Blizzard who just has classes take turns being the broken class.

I don't think true balance can ever be achieved in a card game due to the nature of constant updates with new cards. At least with what Blizz is doing by shifting the meta every few updates keeps things fresh and encourages players to theorycraft new decks.

However, I don't agree with the same philosophy for their other games.

Problem with letting priest be good is that priest has no face deck. Every priest is 100% control all the time. And you don't want ladder to be filled with control decks because control decks in HS are incredibly fucking slow to win, and people would quit the game just to not have 35 minute matches.

Blizzard needs to figure out a way to have control decks in their game that have very fast kill conditions, like in Magic. Waiting till fatigue should basically never be a valid kill condition.

The only true way to balance card games is legacy/vintage style, but that makes the game take SKILL and that's a big no-no.

They are in a unique position where they are naturally the best control decks around, giving them face options and better win conditions would throw their balance all out of wack.

Out of all the classes Mage and Priest stood to gain the most from further card expansions considering their base cards were head and shoulders above the rest. Problem is Blizzard did the WoW thing and didn't care about Mage balance but they do however care about Priest balance because Control is never fun to play against.

Sad thing is Kara is looking like it won't shake things up at all for the meta, none of the cards are game-changers. Warriors are going to rule for another 4 months at least. Then Blizzard is going to release the next set and give them absolutely nothing so they fade to nothing again like in Vanilla.

>Playing SV
>Play control blood/haven
>Half of my games end up with people conceding even when they are sitting at 20hp

Oh man, Hearthstone sounds like a nightmare in comparison.

I think the Riot/League/Moba way is the best way. Just make everybody OP.

what the fuck this card is just much much much better big game hunter whoever made this needs to off themselves

>its a fix priest episode

I'll drop a few.

considering the wording, I doubt he even plays the game

Since OP apparently is thinking of Hearthstone specifically, suppose it had a system that would dynamically change the craft cost of cards based on how much play they've seen recently (rarely used cards cheaper, highly played cards more expensive), while giving a couple of rarely used cards as a free extra as you open a card pack. Since players already have completed decks, it wouldn't have large effect right now, but as new cards are released, it'd start making much more sense.

If things would work out as I imagine they would, more players would be inclined to experiment in favour of playing cheap (both in terms of craft cost and playing dirty strategies) net decks which is the nature of balance problems affecting 99.5%+ of players and even in terms of "competitive" Hearthstone, unless the game is utterly mindless and fully solved (at which point balance is the least of its worries), this increased experimentation should result in the discovery of unobvious counters to obviously potent decks seen today.

Like I already mentioned in my original post, I think balance problems should generally be sidestepped or attacked from more creative angles. This is an example that just came to my mind.

Priest basically needs 2 and 3 mana cost cards that you want to play on turn 2 and 3.
All of priest's low cost cards are something you don't play in early turns, more or less.

Buff weak, always. Nerf only in case of game-breaking things

Trying to make Shadow Form viable.

Presumably it was made before the BGH nerf.

Like Diablo 3? Or do you get an example for a company, that does this.

well, time to run Ancient Watchers

...

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as someone who crafted two golden Shadowforms, I'd play this.

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I wish there were shadow form synergy cards.

>suppose it had a system that would dynamically change the craft cost of cards based on how much play they've seen recently
Stopped reading.
A similar thing was tried in CSS and it turned out to be fucking shit.

Actually Hearthstone had a secret matchmaking system that tried to put the biggest cancer decks, in the time of Deathrattle Hunter and the other Naxxramas nastiness, against their direct counters.
If you played your aggro zoo you'd get matched against mid range decks that can handle it, but if you put one really slow card in it, the matchmaking would think you are playing control, and match you against other control, and you'd get free wins.
I don't remember the exacts, but I tested it with like 50 games, and it worked every time.

Play and fumble with values until it feels great.

Make everything equally overpowered.

>and priests have plenty of other aoe options for less mana
you fucking dumb? Or are you one of those cucks that play Wild with a Lightbomb?