Hearthstone splitting into 'Standard' and 'Wild' formats, adding more deck slots
Blizzard has announced some big changes coming to Hearthstone formats later this spring, in an effort to make the game less intimidating to new players.
Blizzard has announced some big new changes to Hearthstone, by splitting play into two distinct formats.
As detailed on the Hearthstone Blog, play will now be split into "Standard" and "Wild" formats. Standard will be the play mode for recently released expansions, allowing Blizzard to create a more tightly balanced experience with limited formats. Wild is the new name for the play mode we already know, where all previous expansions are in play allowing for more crazy card combinations.
Both formats will have both Ranked and Casual play, and your Rank will be tracked separately in each format and matched against other players using the same format. You can even reach Legend in both formats. Standard will become the new official format for the Hearthstone Championship Tour as well. However, Arena, Solo, and Adventures aren't available in Standard format. Plus, Adventures and Expansions that aren't part of Standard format will be cycled out of sale in the Shop, so you'll have to either buy those before the deadline or craft the cards individually.
Standard will consist of the Basic and Classic card sets, along with any expansions released within the current or previous calendar year. For the initial roll-out this spring, that will mean no curse of Naxxramas or Goblins vs Gnomes cards. Moving forward, new card sets will be added to Standard while others cycle out of play. Each Standard play year will be named after an Azeroth constellation, so this first one will be called the Year of the Kraken. Blizzard says the move is intended to make it easier to balance new expansions, and to allow new players to jump in without needing to collect such a wide array of cards.
The announcement also includes word of more deck slots. The long-requested feature will be added sometime before Standard format comes into play, letting anyone who has unlocked all nine heroes access 18 slots instead of the usual nine.
Finally, though the announcement doesn't share more details, it does note the Standard format will include a "Spring 2016 Expansion," confirming suspicions that another one is on the way soon.
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replySteve Watts posted a new article, Hearthstone splitting into 'Standard' and 'Wild' formats, adding more deck slots
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I really don't like this change
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there's a minor up front cost for massively reduced in game complexity
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Since non-standard packs and adventures will no longer be purchasable it seems like it will be very easy on newcomers. Get gold, buy the latest pack, and play standard. Wild is obviously wild so new people shouldn't play it.
Whether or not completely removing all the old stuff from the store being a good idea is totally not clear. Especially removing Naxx is odd just from a single player perspective.
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has been inevitable from day 1
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No naxx cards is huge for a meta shift in standard. So vanilla cards will never be phased out of standard?
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apparently, seems a little strange
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Magic used to have a yearly core set that was all reprints but not 100% the same reprints each year. This is roughly analogous to HS's classic set except it still changed over time and wasn't entirely the same every year. Magic eventually began also printing new cards in the core sets along with it being many reprints. In the past year they have abolished core sets entirely, and normal expansions will just include reprints of old cards sometimes. Often new sets will just have functional reprints of old classics that have the same cost/effect but new name/art to match the flavor of the new set (generally this only happens at lower rarities so the cost to players is near $0).
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Because as it is now a lot of decks are hamstrung unless they include certain cards at each drop, limiting variety among other things. We will probably see a shift from tempo to more value oriented play in the Standard format with a lot of those key cards no longer available to use.
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Because without rotating they can't balance the game properly without destroying power levels and making the classic cards worthless. Piloted Shredder was always going to be the best neutral 4 drop, Dr Boom the best 7, and so on.
Hearthstone is less complex then MtG but power creep and balance are still major issues, especially since there are only 30 cards per deck and every slot counts-
you know better than to respond to Haxim trolls :p
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why did you think they wouldn't do it? There was no way it could maintain the accessibility that made it so popular without this change, they surely knew that and have been using the MTG playbook pretty closely from the start.
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I just didn't see any possible way for them to keep the game lean and straightforward without rotation. Like I said above, you add a small amount of complexity up front (now someone asks 'I just started HS what mode do I play?' and they're told 'Standard, don't worry about the rest for now'), but you maintain that lean gameplay instead. Not having any rotation would be far more complicated long term.
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This is obviously not super useful, but it's interesting - here is how the current 'top' meta decks will be affected by this change: ttps://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/43veck/adding_formats_to_hearthstone/czl8xeb
Secret paladin and midrange paladin get pretty dismantled (amongst other decks); most of the strong paladin early game came from those sets-
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The heck he is. My Murloc-adin is not affected by this change.
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