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Look, everyone has stuff going on on their lives. It’s not easy to get around to every little task you’d mean to do. Let’s try to be respectful of other peoples suns.
Look, everyone has stuff going on on their lives. It’s not easy to get around to every little task you’d mean to do. Let’s try to be respectful of other peoples suns.
Welcome. :)
Is Hearthstone's Wild format an example of a non-rotating format you believe succeeds at the goals you're aiming to achieve with LoR's Eternal?
Or, while I'm sure it'll have its own unique elements, what format from another game is the closest design philosophy to what you're imagining for LoR's Eternal? "If you enjoyed X, we expect you'll enjoy Eternal."
What elements, if any, of those formats do you think need addressing / changing / are unideal?
Hearthstone’s wild format has some similarities but because that game is designed differently and the rotation mostly happens automatically based on time the results are very different. Malygos from hearthstone is just a good example because it was rotated manually from the non rotating clsssic set to the wild format which is a similar situation.
I’m not sure which eternal formal will be the closest to LoR’s from another game? Because the unique cards and properties of each change things a lot.
It's not a well known game. It was a browser based game called Kingdoms. Always had trouble surviving economically but the small number of people that played it were hooked. When the old devs left, one of their players bought the game and tried to bringing it back to life (he was the one suggesting the above). Unfortunately, they could not sustain themselves and their Steam release failed so it just kinda died out. Shame, because despite the simple concept it had a lot of depth.
I always like checking out new cardgames. I'll see if I can dig up some info on it. Thanks. :)
Read moreTo respond to the edit, since I missed it early: It really is as simple as "it plays very differently". Or "it has cards I cant play with currently". And its not uncommon for those cards to be cards so broken theyre still banned. Its not because they dont want to play with newer cards though. The people playing these formats typically play modern formats too. Those who just dislike new cards, theyre the people you see on EdoPro going "no XYZ/Link/Pendulum/Synchro/Whatever", who are ... well theyre kind of a joke in the community.
First of all, YGOs powercreep doesnt even hold a candle to HS' powercreep. In YGO its pretty common for a 5 year old deck to still be viable. In HS, its unheard of for a 1 year old deck to still be viable. If anything, YGOs powercreep is most similar to MTGs, though its ahead. Second, powercreep is not why these formats were created. Again, its just people wanting to play older formats they enjoyed. Its the same as Magic having 93/94. If anything, ...
First of all, YGOs powercreep doesnt even hold a candle to HS' powercreep.
I was going to make my last reply my, well, last reply but this caught my eye and may explain some of the reasons we have such different perspectives. I think we might have very definitions of power creep.
The standard-legal decks from Hearthstone today seem much more similar in power level than the best decks from 2014 when it launched than the best decks in Yugioh do to the best decks from 2014.
If we compare the first 8 years of each game, comparing the decks of 2010 yugioh to the 2002 release is also a substantial differnece. Gladiator beasts, synchros, etc are huge spikes in power compared to summoned skull beatdown.
This doesn't factor in occasional broken outliers in various formats when some deck is WAY stronger than intended, as opposed to intentional and necessary power creep in eternal-focused competitive environments. Accidents are acc...
Read moreRead moreYes, thats what powercreeping is in the theory people present, but it doesnt work great when you look at it. Lets go by your example. Except, well start with a 4/10 rotating format. Now, a new set comes out. The new cards have to be 4.1 on average to be playable. Then another set, 4.2. 4.3, and were down to a year. Now, lets say it rotates now. All the 4/10 cards rotate out, new sets come out. But ... the cards that stay are all 4.3. So now, you have to powercreep them again. 4.4, 4.5, 4.6, and by the time 4.3 rotates, its already powercrept. This is why the logic falls apart. If powercreep is neccessary without rotation, its just as neccessary with rotation. Again, HS is a brilliant example for this. When TGT and BRM rotated, it didnt matter, because MSOG existed. When MSOG rotated it didnt matter, because the Witchwood/Boomsday existed. And so on.
For the example of Sadist and self-sacrifice, I have 2 issues. One, polarising matchups always exist, thats unavoida...
I feel like I've already spent a lot of time trying to explain this, and it's okay if you don't agree but I feel like I keep repeating the same points. I'm giving examples from games I've worked on, tried iterations on, and playtested different meta environments. I feel like you're often telling me that things I experienced can't possibly have happened because of flaws in theory, but it's not just theory - it's drawn from games I've worked on and games my co-workers have too.
We also have people on our team, both now and when standard was first proposed, that were WOTC veterans as well as veteran designers or pro players of various cardgames.
That doesn't mean we're always going to be right, we definitely won't be, designers make mistakes all the time, but we have the benefit of seeing some more data and trying to solve the design and balance problems that we're talking about both with and without rotation. It's not hypothetical to us, we've designed within these ...
Read moreRead moreBut thats the thing. If this logic was true, the stuff that rotates out would already long have been powercrept. It would be competing against new stuff, not old stuff, because the new stuff would already be stronger than old stuff. HS shows this quite well, rotation didnt slowed down powercreep (if anything it accelerated it 10-fold), because by the time anything rotated out, it already wasnt relevant and the new sets were powercreeping what didnt rotate.
Thats ... not why those formats exist. Im sorry to say, but it sounds like youre not familiar with YGO at all, and are basically speaking from the stuff you hear around in the public conversation which is usually extremely far from accurate. Retro formats exist because people like those specific formats. Its why goat format exists, edison format exists, but the period between those 2 does not have a format. Hell, there have been cases of retro formats being played at times where the current format was lower...
But thats the thing. If this logic was true, the stuff that rotates out would already long have been powercrept.
No, it wouldn't - because power creeping is a tactic to accomplish a goal given a specific problem. If the goal is to make the average new deck better than the best decks from the whole game; you end up power creeping.
If you have a 9/10 eternal format the new cards need to be 9.1 on average to be playable. This rasises the average of the entire game over time. The next cards need to be 9.2 to outdo the previous 9.1 cards.
If you rotate, things are more sustainable. The best cards or the ones that restrict the most future design space can be rotated out of standard, meaning that the power level stays relatively stable. It fluctuates certainly but it can be brought down when it starts to get out of control.
Basically, it's much easier to create a diverse metagame where everything new has a niche in the compeittive...
Read moreRead moreIt should just require small, targetted nerfs, unless you want to print basically the same exact card again. Theres plenty of design space for archetypes that dont overlap, and you dont need to print staples over and over. Also, just a small note, power creep is more associated with HS than YGO tbh.
Wouldnt what were playing right now be just rotation? Were before the earliest point at which rotation could happen, and all the design is contained in about the timeframe rotation design is in. If there are issues right now, they are issues in rotation, no? Hell, even some of the issues listed sound like issues that arise specifically from rotation-focused card design. For example not being able to keep printing card draw because it becomes redundant. But why print that much card draw anyway? It makes sense in rotation because they keep rotating out, so you just print basically the same card over and over, but in Eternal there isnt much of a reason to keep printing basically th...
My issue with the Tl;Dr, is that if that logic was true, you could apply it to rotation as well, and it would lead to the same outcome. If you have to powercreep without rotation, you have to powercreep withrotation just as much.
I'm not sure how else to explain why this isn't the case, because the reason you need to power creep is to make sure new stuff can compete against the best stuff across the history of the game. If you aren't competing against that stuff because it's rotated out, you don't need to power creep.
Compare MTG to Yugioh. In yugioh the community created older formats that banned *newer* cards because the older decks and playstyles they enjoyed couldn't compete with the escalating power creep of new stuff. GOAT format is an example.
Let's say you're a designer for MTG. You need to make cards that are competitive-worthy in standard. This means you can print burn spells that aren't as strong as lightning bolt and co...
Read moreRead moreYeah I suppose the pool selection thing is fair. The UI was not the issue though. And splitting the queues was ... not exactly an issue? They undid rotation nearly immediately, so the queues were unsplit, but the game still died. It was that a lot of players left over rotation. And we know that, because the successors which got everything from the previous devs, including the data, confirmed that doing rotation at all was a mistake and that the Duelyst reboot will not have any rotation for that reason.
Not exactly. Its moreso that card games doing rotation, for one reason or another, dont tend to live very long. There are those that died because of rotation, there are those that died for other reasons, but the point is that they died, and that the amount of successful card games with rotation is very low, and the 2 physical ones of them are from the 90s, one of which is the first ever card game, and the other one is backed up by the worlds biggest IP.
Oh certainly, ...
Yeah I suppose the pool selection thing is fair. The UI was not the issue though. And splitting the queues was ... not exactly an issue? They undid rotation nearly immediately, so the queues were unsplit, but the game still died.
I saw a ton of people confused about the UI at the time, it wasn't a deal-breaker but it's worth noting. A lot of people didn't know how to make standard decks in the first place, people frequently got rewards they couldn't use in standard when they didn't have many standard options already (we're taking steps to ensure new players build up reasonable standard collections quickly), and the devs did list the queue-splitting as the major concern if I recall correctly. I wan't a big duelyst player though, just going off my general knowledge - I try to keep track of most games.
The queue issue is almost always a big concern with smaller indie titles though, when working on Faeria (an indie pvp cardgame that was also p...
Read moreRead moreBut you already are saying that youre gonna support eternal. And that its not an issue if there are stronger interactions in Eternal because its a higher power format. That suggests that doing cool new stuff is entirely possible in Eternal, because otherwise you cant solve the problem rotation is claiming to solve without making Eternal unsupported, no?
With all due respect, this is something people who are very unfamiliar with Yugioh say. This hasn't been true for the better part of 5 years, and even then it was only rarely true in the first place. Yugioh is primarily about grind games, and resource management, and has been like that. And ... well there is a reason its the worlds biggest card game. People like this style of play a lot.
I dont think Modern Horizons is a great example, because peoples issue wasn't the fact that it was a set made for modern (Actually, that was the part people really liked), it was that specific cards had their tuning...
But you already are saying that youre gonna support eternal. And that its not an issue if there are stronger interactions in Eternal because its a higher power format. That suggests that doing cool new stuff is entirely possible in Eternal, because otherwise you cant solve the problem rotation is claiming to solve without making Eternal unsupported, no?
It's totally possible to make the new cards we print better than the old cards, but it eventually requires power creeping them a lot like Yugioh does, or mega-nerfing old stuff so it might as well not exist when it comes to the metagame.
While it might be easier for us as devs, we think the power creep version would warp the competitive metagame while the mega-nerf version would make past decks effectively unplayable everywhere - instead of having a dedicated format.
Eternal is already the focused competitive mode. We're already playing eternal. Eternal is what's legal in the game ...
Read moreRead moreNo, actually, not really. Duelyst implemented rotation in essentially the same way. It would've been different had it not died before the timeframe where a "spotlight" would be in LoR, but it did, so it was the same. And no, the issue was straightforward. People didnt want rotation. What you mention as "ranked" and "unranked" queue is a bit misleading, because the "ranked" queue was standard, and the "unranked" queue was Eternal. What happened is that everyone played Eternal and no one played standard, which caused standard queue length to be way too long. And it wasnt because of eternal being unranked, its because of eternal being eternal. No one wanted to play standard. And thats just the people that stayed, many straight up left. It was the direct result of rotation. Rotation killed a stable game.
Thats ... not really accurate though. People like to say that its "many", but in reality the number is 4. Its MTG, Pokemon for physical, and HS and SV for digital. There have b...
Duelyst implemented rotation in essentially the same way.
Their rotation was purely based on time in the meta, like MTG's and Hearthstone's, and involved different UI/UX that made a lot of people very confused. Duelyst was also dealing with such a low population that splitting queues was a much, much bigger problem. They couldn't support multiple formats in the same way.
There have been a lot of other card games with rotation, but they're all dead.
I'm not sure how to respond to this, because it seems you're assuming any cardgame that was discontinued after introducing a form of rotation as being *because* of rotation. That just doesn't match the stuff I know from talking to the companies and looking at the data. Lots of card games that didn't introduce rotation were also cancelled.
On your last point, the problem is that often its already too late when rotation causes problem. Duelyst, a few years back, did rotation, despite overwhelmingly negative feedback to the idea, and many fans, myself included, predicting it would kill the game. It in fact was so bad they reverted it nearly immediately, but it was too late. The game lost too many players, and it died. As players predicted, rotation killed it. Can LoR really afford to repeat this mistake?
I believe Duelyst had quite a few other challenges and implemented rotation differently. Based on what they posted at the time, their issue was primarily a smaller population largely moving to unranked mode and making queue times on ranked too long. We're in a much healthier place.
It's also worth noting that many, many, many cardgames have introduced some form of rotation without the game dying. Players are always, and rightly, concerned when it's announced. I don't mean to say it's silly to be concerned, this is a big deal and it's about when and how you get to play your favorite cards. That matters a lot. I'm just noting that it's more like a routine surgery - things can go wrong but often the wisdom teeth come out and things go on well.
My two cents: I loved playing my two favorite decks in HS Wild (Malygos Druid and Demon Warlock) and more than once I would hit legend with them after getting legend in Standard.
I think having an alternative mode for ranked is great and I can't wait. My only and huge issue in HS was how expensive it was to try to keep one mode, imagine two. Here we won't have this issue.
(The only thing I'm starving is for some more mind-blowing interactions [yes, I love Lee Sin and Virgo]).
Thanks. I'm really excited too. I can't wait to make more cards to explore all the new design space that'll get freed up with rotation. :)
Heres what I dont get. If you want to have 2 seperate formats with seperate power anyway. And you dont mind releasing powerful combos into one of the format because the other, lower power format exists ... why dont you make the lower power format secondary? Keep "Eternal" as it is, the main gamemode with permanent ranked and tournament focus, and make the rotating format a secondary one, which gets less attention because it needs less attention, with still permanent ranked (because thats a minimum), but less competitive support. That sounds like it would solve every concern you bring up, while also not running into the many pitfalls of rotation that cause it to bleed players.
why dont you make the lower power format secondary?
Very reasonable question. The main reason is because eternal is aimed at being a place to preserve the greatest hits and standard is a place to make room for cool new stuff. If the new stuff has to compete with the old stuff, that's the very problem we're trying to solve with rotation. We have to either powercreep the new or heavily nerf the old to make the new cards able to compete. This results in disrupting the old decks instead of preserving them and making synergy breaks happen more often because the new cards are ecalating in power level.
Yugioh's metagame over the years is an example of what happens. The game has changed to massive complexity and power spikes as players summon huge boards on turn 1 to try and lock their opponent out of destroying everything and insta-killing them on their own first turn.
We can also look at Modern Horizons sets for an example: many players...
Read moreI like your logic. I never thought of it that way. If you really enjoy a certain playstyle (like Azirelia in your example), it would be less of a loss if you knew you could play it as you remembered it in a different format. Playing a gutted rendition of it in standard would just feel bad (cue the "look how they massacred my boy" screenshot).
Thanks. I often like jumping around eternal formats in other games I've played for exactly this reason.
Severe nerfs can also break patterns you remember, such as heavily disrupting the mana curve. The Malygos example is actually great here, because significantly nerfing Malygos' spell damage would make the combo decks that people used to play with him non-functional. They'd no longer deal enough damage to kill the opponent. Heavily nerfing him so he was no longer competitively relevant in standard would mean massacring the decks his fans enjoyed.
Great, so Vlad players get to enjoy their card in a mode that only has competitive support now and then, and that has a bunch of broken combos that the team will only adjust ever so often, meaning Vlad has to be massively overtuned to ever be "good" as if this is a base requirement, for the sake of another mode entirely where Vlad wouldn't make a dent.
Just support self harm strategies in Noxus. Not like aggro can easily abuse them.
Just support self harm strategies in Noxus. Not like aggro can easily abuse them.
That's the problem. Supporting them in Noxus would mean either wildly overtuning Vladmir to work in ways that are weird for its region identity (which you mentioned being frustrating). It causes issues when we support self-harm strategies in Noxus.
Vladmir is a very awkward fit for Noxus and probably wouldn't be designed this way with the benefit of hindsight. Rotating and buffing to a more permissive eternal environment lets us solve the region identity issues by moving Vlad to a place where he can be stronger without causing the same problems. We're also considering new takes on Vlad (as mentioned in the first article) because of this for the future.
Read moreI love the 2nd paragraph, as this seems to be something that goes over people's heads during the rotation discussion. Certain cards/interactions/playstyles can be so overwhelmingly toxic or crowd the design space enough that the only way they could continue to exist in the future of a non-rotating card list is by nerfing them into basically being unplayable, which might as well be the same effect as rotating. Like sure, you could play this completely gutted, unviable deck at that point in your standard game, but why would you. Using your examples of power levels you've been using throughout the thread here, say a marginal tier 3 ladder deck had a 3/10 power level. Certain cards that can't continue to exist as for a healthy game going forward would need to be kneecapped down to being a 1/10. For the people saying "Don't rotate, just nerf as needed", I don't think such heavy handed nerfs that would be required to achieve what is needed would be received favorably either.
Obvi...
Great summary.
"To me this seems better for Malygos fans than creating a significantly nerfed version for standard."
The problem with this conclusion is that this is subjective. I quite disagree with this point - I'd rather see a card I'm a fan of reworked or nerfed as opposed to removed to a mode I have no interest in playing, in this case eternal, as that is essentially the same as just deleting the card.
But I accept I'm probably in the minority here...and for the sake or LoR hopefully so!
It's definitely subjective, and it matters on a card by card basis. I believe Malygos made more sense to rotate than significantly nerf (I didn't make the decision btw, I just agree with it) because by significantly nerfing him to solve the standard problems it no longer felt like Malygos.
It'd be like nerfing Black Lotus to be playable in standard MTG, it'd no longer feel like Black Lotus. Better to keep that in Vintage and make a new card.
Malygos was the big OTK dragon. Players using him would build up a hand of 0 cost spells that dealt tiny amounts of damage (like Moonfire, which cost 0 and dealt 1) then unleash them in a flurry the turn they played Malygos (+5 spell damage meant Moonfire now dealt 6!).
If he was nerfed from +5 spell damage to +2, or maybe +3 and 10 mana, then all the decks built around him would stop working; because they relied on his big spell damage to deliver crushing combo-kills. Nerfing him significantly would likely make him irr...
Read moreRead moreHi Dan, thanks so much for all the work you’ve done answering these comments, which I know can be a mixed bag of positivity and negativity.
I am all for trying to preserve unique decks that may or may not have unhealthy play patterns for Standard. I just hope that the dev team realizes that decks like Azir Irelia or Targon’s Peak deserve a place of their own in Eternal, away from a definitely more competitive-focused Standard. I think awkward cards that have had to be all but killed have generally been cards that are so unique that they can’t be reasonably balanced. Maybe the balance levers are just not there. These are the sorts of cards I would like to see nerfed or reworked in Standard to retain competitive integrity, but preserved in Eternal for everyone to enjoy.
Lengthy postscript ramble:
I especially think many landmarks without countdowns on them like Veiled Temple or Targon’s Peak end up being this way. If they’re too good they end up being very fr...
Eternal is definitely a place where stuff can be crazier than Standard, and I think it's better when two formats feel meaningfully different; so people that prefer different metagames can focus on their favorites. Can't comment on those cards specifically but the general style of "fun, exciting, unique engines that maybe are too swingy for the main competitive format" sounds like a good place for eternal to me. There's a lot of ways to approach it though, that's just one.
Read moreWould it be better to meganerf Irelia and her support cards until the deck isn't competitively viable, but keep it technically possible to play it on a standard ranked ladder?
yes, absolutely this, for dedicated irelia players her current position of being "playable in ranked but on the weak side" is ABSOLUTELY preferable to "literally unplayable in standard ranked but maybe stronger in an unsupported format".
most of my favorite champions are in B and C tier and i will still be gutted the day i can't lose with terrible homebrews in ranked anymore.
was the idea of leaving champions intact and 'balancing through rotation' by hitting their support packages ever considered? would irelia be such a scary champion to design around if greenglade duo + sparring student weren't in standard?
i know there are lots of discussions happening behind the scenes but i've been surprised to see zero public consideration of this idea, which ...
yes, absolutely this, for dedicated irelia players her current position of being "playable in ranked but on the weak side" is ABSOLUTELY preferable to "literally unplayable in standard ranked but maybe stronger in an unsupported format".
Just to be clear, her current position hasn't been mega-nerfed. She's just been nerfed, but is still a potential consideration in the format. She is still sharply restricting design space for token decks.
She would have to be nerfed way, way more to make her truly irrelevant in the competitive metagame. That's the point of mega-nerfing, to make something so weak it might as well not exist when it comes to competitive balance; so that the card is no longer restricting design space.