Power Creep in Hearthstone (and other CCGs)

[Red_Rob]

I believe using pre-6th edition rules (which only came into force in 1999) you couldn't actually use a Lion's Eye in that way as there was no "stack". Once you declared you were casting your tutor/card drawing spell you could then only declare "interrupts" until the "batch" had resolved. This meant you either used your Lions Eye before declaring the tutor and had to ditch it, or you waited until it had resolved and had the new cards in hand.

It's also notable that combo decks weren't seen as a competitive thing in early Magic. Until ProsBloom most people believed combo's were too unreliable and vulnerable to countermagic to be taken seriously. Throwing your hand away and adding a load of mana to your mana pool was just an invitation for your opponent to counter something and leave you with a big pile of manaburn.

[Previn]

I believe using pre-6th edition rules (which only came into force in 1999) you couldn't actually use a Lion's Eye in that way as there was no "stack". Once you declared you were casting your tutor/card drawing spell you could then only declare "interrupts" until the "batch" had resolved. This meant you either used your Lions Eye before declaring the tutor and had to ditch it, or you waited until it had resolved and had the new cards in hand.

If you had a batch of instants going, and someone cast an interrupt (or mana ability) nothing else could be played until that interrupt/mana ability resolved (unless your opponent had interrupts as well). Once it resolved, more instants could be played in the normal fashion.

The big difference in moving to the stack over the batch, was that your resolved the batch in it's entirety before checking for the final state of things, unlike the stack. So under the batch if you giant growthed a 1/1 and your opponent responded by tossing a lightning bolt at it, the lightning bolt would resolve, dealing 3 damage, then the giant growth would resolve making a 4/4 creature with 3 damage. Very different from the stack where the creature would be dead before the giant growth hit.

[Mistborn]

Pre-6th LED was a mana source so you could totally cast a tutor or something and then crack it before it resolved. The right cards just didn't exist for that to be a strong play.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Yeah, I've been meaning to ask about that for a long time- Shouldn't Lion's Eye have already been finding use as tutor support? Tutor on the stack, Lion's Eye on the stack. You discard your hand and float 3, then Tutor goes off and you fetch a game ending finisher so you don't really care about the cards in hand.

Usually hard to end the game with just 3 mana, but there are plenty of things you can do to draw cards and you could put one of those on the stack and then empty your hand for one or more Lion's Eyes. Hell, even the current set has things like Nissa's Revelation that put a huge pile of cards in your hand.

-Username17

Two LEDs into The Cheese Stands Alone turn 1 sounds nice.

[Mistborn]

Two LEDs into The Cheese Stands Alone turn 1 sounds nice.

Wouldn't work. You discard your hand before you get to use the mana.

[Username17]

Two LEDs into The Cheese Stands Alone turn 1 sounds nice.

Wouldn't work. You discard your hand before you get to use the mana.

You'd need to do it turn 2. Turn 1 Ebon Stronghold and two LEDs, turn two sac it out for a Demonic Tutor and 6 white mana. You win the game on turn 3 upkeep unless your opponent can counter something or destroy the enchantment in the two turns they have.

Still, horribly unreliable. But if you were going to make a Barren Glory deck, Lion's Eye Diamonds and Sac Lands would play a prominent part in it anyway. It takes 3 sac lands to pay for Barren Glory outright, which you can do on turn 4. Then it's just a matter of getting everything from your hand into your graveyard, and the LED is very good at that.

I don't think a Barren Glory deck was ever competitive, but it is funny as fuck and I would like to have seen someone win that way. It's like seeing a Ring victory in L5R.

-Username17

[zugschef]

Bad cards do not help players learn the game. Simple cards do.

Ben Brode answered that bad cards need to exist to teach new players

Monte Cook and Sean K Shitlord say trap options need to exist in tabletop to teach new players. Fuck this mentality in every form.

It's a bad argument, certainly. Pretty much everyone realizes that simply not having synergy is enough bad for any game to do that, so deliberate trap options are unnecessary at best and downright counter-productive at worst.

In truth, I think it's just a cover for bad design. Making terrible things is very easy and making good things is very hard, so just writing off a chunk of your game as "designed to be bad" is a great way make it look like you were working on the afternoons when you didn't have any good ideas.

I'm not so sure that you can compare a rpg with a ccg in that respect. Trap options in a rpg screw over your character and that possibly means that you will play a mechanically shitty piece of crap for months or even years (as it was in my case, as my first character was a monk; *cheers* lago). In a ccg such as Hearthstone you play a few games and realize that a creature with 1 health without any special ability to redeem it sucks because it gets killed by pings. You swap that card out and replace your shitty Magma Rager with an Ironfur Grizzly. Deck improved. After maybe 5 games. And then you realize that a taunt for a 3 mana 3/3 is pretty bad, too and cut the bear from your deck, too. You replace it with an Imp Gang Boss because you're playing Zoolock (which is a pretty cheap deck to construct and features creature combat which is good for new players to learn the game).

As for card rarity, it impacts booster draft games (MtG) or the arena (hearthstone). Shitty commons screw you over. Best example for that is the HS warrior in the arena. This class is infamously known as the worst arena class and blizz gives them this common in the upcoming expansion. This is a card which is only worth it in a deck with a shitload of taunts (which is gonna be a shitty deck anyway, but whatever) and in arena you're not guaranteed to have even a single taunt. But this card is an epic. It's not good, it's simply a worse Boulderfist Ogre (a really good arena card), but it's playable. The warrior got even worse in arena.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Two LEDs into The Cheese Stands Alone turn 1 sounds nice.

Wouldn't work. You discard your hand before you get to use the mana.

You'd need to do it turn 2. Turn 1 Ebon Stronghold and two LEDs, turn two sac it out for a Demonic Tutor and 6 white mana. You win the game on turn 3 upkeep unless your opponent can counter something or destroy the enchantment in the two turns they have.

Still, horribly unreliable. But if you were going to make a Barren Glory deck, Lion's Eye Diamonds and Sac Lands would play a prominent part in it anyway. It takes 3 sac lands to pay for Barren Glory outright, which you can do on turn 4. Then it's just a matter of getting everything from your hand into your graveyard, and the LED is very good at that.

I don't think a Barren Glory deck was ever competitive, but it is funny as fuck and I would like to have seen someone win that way. It's like seeing a Ring victory in L5R.

-Username17

Demonic Tutor is banned in Legacy and restricted in Vintage, which is kind of awkward. Infernal Tutor is legal in Legacy and becomes demonic tutor when you activate LED.

Kaervek's Spite on your opponent's end step with Barren Glory on the stack is another way to activate Barren Glory if you play it later, such as via Academy Rector.

EDIT: Wait, KS needs to be done differently.

[RelentlessImp]

Bad cards do not help players learn the game. Simple cards do.

Monte Cook and Sean K Shitlord say trap options need to exist in tabletop to teach new players. Fuck this mentality in every form.

It's a bad argument, certainly. Pretty much everyone realizes that simply not having synergy is enough bad for any game to do that, so deliberate trap options are unnecessary at best and downright counter-productive at worst.

In truth, I think it's just a cover for bad design. Making terrible things is very easy and making good things is very hard, so just writing off a chunk of your game as "designed to be bad" is a great way make it look like you were working on the afternoons when you didn't have any good ideas.

I'm not so sure that you can compare a rpg with a ccg in that respect. Trap options in a rpg screw over your character and that possibly means that you will play a mechanically shitty piece of crap for months or even years (as it was in my case, as my first character was a monk; *cheers* lago). In a ccg such as Hearthstone you play a few games and realize that a creature with 1 health without any special ability to redeem it sucks because it gets killed by pings. You swap that card out and replace your shitty Magma Rager with an Ironfur Grizzly. Deck improved. After maybe 5 games. And then you realize that a taunt for a 3 mana 3/3 is pretty bad, too and cut the bear from your deck, too. You replace it with an Imp Gang Boss because you're playing Zoolock (which is a pretty cheap deck to construct and features creature combat which is good for new players to learn the game).

As for card rarity, it impacts booster draft games (MtG) or the arena (hearthstone). Shitty commons screw you over. Best example for that is the HS warrior in the arena. This class is infamously known as the worst arena class and blizz gives them this common in the upcoming expansion. This is a card which is only worth it in a deck with a shitload of taunts (which is gonna be a shitty deck anyway, but whatever) and in arena you're not guaranteed to have even a single taunt. But this card is an epic. It's not good, it's simply a worse Boulderfist Ogre (a really good arena card), but it's playable. The warrior got even worse in arena.

Let's be honest - the only thing that "bad cards" do is get the creators of the game more money, because they can replace good cards in booster packs, causing people to buy more in their quest for good cards. That's the only acceptable reason for their existence. Making up any other excuse is intellectually dishonest.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Let's be honest - the only thing that "bad cards" do is get the creators of the game more money, because they can replace good cards in booster packs, causing people to buy more in their quest for good cards. That's the only acceptable reason for their existence. Making up any other excuse is intellectually dishonest.

I have a question for you: is this a good card or a bad card?

[RelentlessImp]

Let's be honest - the only thing that "bad cards" do is get the creators of the game more money, because they can replace good cards in booster packs, causing people to buy more in their quest for good cards. That's the only acceptable reason for their existence. Making up any other excuse is intellectually dishonest.

I have a question for you: is this a good card or a bad card?

I haven't actually played M:tG in a few years, so I have no fucking idea. A 1 mana instant for 3 damage as an interrupt would have been decent when I played, though.

[Kaelik]

Let's be honest - the only thing that "bad cards" do is get the creators of the game more money, because they can replace good cards in booster packs, causing people to buy more in their quest for good cards. That's the only acceptable reason for their existence. Making up any other excuse is intellectually dishonest.

I have a question for you: is this a good card or a bad card?

I haven't actually played M:tG in a few years, so I have no fucking idea. A 1 mana instant for 3 damage as an interrupt would have been decent when I played, though.

Point of fact, that is 2 mana.

[RadiantPhoenix]

I suppose I'll just plop out my whole argument instead of trying to be clever: no card is ever objectively good. Cards are only good in context.

The last two Pro Tours (Origins and Dragons of Tarkir) were won by players with decks that contained as many copies of Lightning Strike as they were allowed to have (4). Thus, it is a good card in Standard.

Nevertheless, the moment you get into a format where Lightning Bolt (the same spell for one less mana) is legal, nobody plays Lightning Strike. See: Pro Tour Fate Reforged, which was Modern.

[OgreBattle]

If lightning bolt was a sorcery would it be balanced against a 1R instant speed 3 damage?

[RadiantPhoenix]

Unclear but probably not in most formats. The ability to do more off just one land and the increased storm/prowess counts without sacrificing power just seem so good.

Maybe if you were in a format where auras (2-for-1) and/or expensive equips (time walk you) were popular, or where people played lots of cards that cared about CMC (Mental Misstep, Chalice of the Void).

[RelentlessImp]

Point of fact, that is 2 mana.

Right, sorry, forgot about Magic's mana nomenclature.

[Username17]

The point remains that a card is only good or bad because of the environment it exists in. To go back to the original post, a 5/1 creature for 3 is not inherently good or bad in isolation. It can't be, because it has no comparison point. If it existed in an environment where people normally spent four or five to get 5/4 or 5/5 creatures and four to field single target removal, the 5/1 for 3 would be a great deal. It would almost always trade up or hit for big damage and then trade up. On the other hand, if it existed in an environment where people pack a lot of pokes to use as combat tricks to let medium creatures trade up against bigger creatures, the 5/1 for 3 is nearly worthless. It just slows down the poke machine by 1 for a single turn before it dies. I gather that is closer to what Heartstone looks like at the moment.

Such it is with all cards. No matter what cards are made, a good deal of them are going to be bad. The best you could hope for would be for some cards to be "situationally useful" in situations unlikely to exist in the current metagame. Which would make them "bad" in the games you are actually going to play, even if they were "good" in theoretical cases that your opponents were fielding decks that you are not actually going to see.

Let's consider the humble Arashin Cleric. He's a 1/3 and when he comes into play you gain 3 life. People bring that guy into tournaments. Not in their main deck, but as a thing to swap into against Red weenies. The hyper aggressive Red deck plays a lot of 2 power cheap red creatures and tries to kill you really quickly. The Arashin Cleric trades evenly with a lot of cards and also pushes the clock back, letting your bigger creatures or whatever it is you're doing develop. If people weren't afraid of the Red Rush, they wouldn't pack Arashin Clerics at all.

Now cards can be crowded out by directly superior cards. Obviously, if one card is a 2/4 and another card is a 3/4 for the same price, you're going to take the one that does more damage (setting aside Meekstone nonsense for the moment). But even that is a function of external environment. The worse version can only be a worse version because of the existence of the better version. And even then, it can still see play in limited formats like booster draft where one more inferior version of a thing you need is still a thing you need.

It's of course possible for a card to be unplayably bad in all formats. But again and still that's only relative to the other cards and strategies that format sees.

As an experiment, let's say we got together a collection of the top three hundred pro players and had them select the 1500 most powerful cards in Magic’s history. I chose 1500 as that is roughly the size of a full Standard environment. We then ran a Pro Tour for these three hundred players where the format was decks built using only those 1500 cards and basic land. After the tournament, we count how many of each card was used. Any card used in any deck or sideboard (even if there’s only one in the entire tournament) is counted.

Experience (as in: years of looking at outcomes of premier events like Pro Tours, Grand Prix and Nationals) tells us that only 300-400 unique cards would see play. Why? Because even among the best cards, some cards are just better than others. Mahamoti Djinn is a solid creature, but it's no Morphling. Regrowth is an excellent spell but it's not Yawgmoth's Will. In this environment, some of the “good cards” become “bad cards." The phenomenon always holds true. No matter what 1500 cards you pick, the cards will rank in a power order. When a player goes to build a deck (assuming his goal is to build the most competitive deck), he will choose cards at the top of the list before cards at the bottom.

No matter what you do, 80% of the cards aren't going into top tier tournament decks. Because top tier tournament decks only have 75 slots in them and are going to have a lot of repeats. And there are never going to be more than a dozen top tier tournament decks.

-Username17

[icyshadowlord]

Never played M:tG (it's never been a big thing around here) but as a player of Hearthstone, I partially see the better cards coming out as both Power Creep and more of the game becoming "pay to win", which has been a common complaint about it since day 1. Sure you can win matches with the default decks of each class, but said decks are rather boring and not very effective against the myriad of strategies that people who have bought more cards have. Then again, isn't that kind of a moot point too since other CCGs require you to BUY cards before you can play them anyway?

Edit: Not sure how much one should compare the two, but whatever.

[ishy]

On the other hand, if it existed in an environment where people pack a lot of pokes to use as combat tricks to let medium creatures trade up against bigger creatures, the 5/1 for 3 is nearly worthless. It just slows down the poke machine by 1 for a single turn before it dies. I gather that is closer to what Heartstone looks like at the moment.

-Username17

Hearthstone has hero powers. If you spent 2 mana you can activate your hero power (not a card, just something every hero gets). 3/9 heroes can poke your 5/1 for almost no cost before you consider cards. (though two of them pay a life cost for doing that).

[Red_Rob]

To go back to the original post, a 5/1 creature for 3 is not inherently good or bad in isolation. It can't be, because it has no comparison point. If it existed in an environment where people normally spent four or five to get 5/4 or 5/5 creatures and four to field single target removal, the 5/1 for 3 would be a great deal.

I think the context here is that in the new Hearthstone expansion some cards have been released which are strictly better than older cards, as in the same card but with an extra stat point or ability. In particular the old card is 5/1 and dies to a poke, whereas they have now released a 5/2 for the same cost. Releasing new cards that are stronger than old cards isn't necessarily bad per se, as sometimes archetypes or individual cards can be weak and need stronger versions printing. Where this becomes a problem is when the older card is still showing up in boosters / rewards. That seems like somewhat of a misstep.

[Orca]

The 5/1 magma rager is a basic card which you get just by downloading the app. It won't show in rewards of any kind.

There probably are Hearthstone cards which can show up in rewards but which have now been superceded, but that's not one of them.

[zugschef]

Never played M:tG (it's never been a big thing around here) but as a player of Hearthstone, I partially see the better cards coming out as both Power Creep and more of the game becoming "pay to win", which has been a common complaint about it since day 1. Sure you can win matches with the default decks of each class, but said decks are rather boring and not very effective against the myriad of strategies that people who have bought more cards have. Then again, isn't that kind of a moot point too since other CCGs require you to BUY cards before you can play them anyway?

Edit: Not sure how much one should compare the two, but whatever.

I'd say that hearthstone is pay to win earlier. I haven't spent one cent on this game and could construct several competitive decks (before tgt). But one problem is that without all the cards you cannot react to changes in the metagame very well.

[Previn]

The 5/1 magma rager is a basic card which you get just by downloading the app. It won't show in rewards of any kind.

Golden Magma Ragers are the reward for reaching Shaman 57.

[Pseudo Stupidity]

Hearthstone doesn't just have power creep, it is blatantly pay-to-win. There were always cards that were just straight up better than other cards for the same cost.

It's bad that some cards are just way the fuck better than everything else because it sucks to be a new person and not have access to the good stuff. Losing for the first 3 weeks of playing a game is boring and will make people quit. It's bad design to make playing your game boring or frustrating.

Hearthstone is not a complicated game like MtG either, it doesn't need "learnin' cards." At least not yet.

[Previn]

Hearthstone doesn't just have power creep, it is blatantly pay-to-win. There were always cards that were just straight up better than other cards for the same cost.

None of which actually require you to pay real money. I've gotten all the expansions, and 'bought' at least 10 of each pack type without ever spending a cent. I've crafted 2 legionaries on top of that. You don't have to put money down to win in Hearthstone. In fact the RNG is so ridiculous in this game that who wins is often more a matter of luck than anything else.

It's bad that some cards are just way the fuck better than everything else because it sucks to be a new person and not have access to the good stuff. Losing for the first 3 weeks of playing a game is boring and will make people quit. It's bad design to make playing your game boring or frustrating.

That would be true if Hearthstone didn't have a matchmaking system that pitted players somewhat close in playtime/card pool together. I had a friend who started about a month ago. I've watched his matches and he's paired up against people that match up to his cards and play ability. He's winning around 60% of his matches.