by JR Cook - 9 years ago     show comments

If you are reading this, the first ever Hearthstone Tavern Brawl has already ended, probably we are even half-way into the second one. I read a lot of people commenting about the first Tavern Brawl, including these tweets that Mr. Hearthstone Wiki, Tao Hinton sent to Game Developer Ben Brode along with some other people at Blizzard.

“just wanted to say awesome job on the 1st TB, and stoked to see what comes next! 😀 absolutely loving the format, my new favourite game mode in fact! so easy to play a few fun games w/spare time, and do quests 🙂 also really enjoying how losses don’t matter/no big rewards to work at, so no stress/trying too hard. gj!”

This statement really got my attention, mainly because I felt I was in complete disagreement with a lot of it. I played exactly two games of Tavern Brawl, which was what it took to get that juicy reward. The game appeared to be somewhat unbalanced, though I didn’t spend enough time analyzing it to say that with certainty. At least the internet appeared to agree with it, with everyone and their mothers finding Nefarian’s deck to be vastly superior. The reason I didn’t bother with the first Tavern Brawl was because the decks were pre-made taking away the joy from deck-building , I didn’t feel like wins or loses mattered, there weren’t rewards to incentivize continued play, and investing time to get truly skilled with those decks felt like a bad investment of time.

You probably immediately noticed that the same things that Tao enjoyed, were the things that turned me off from the first Tavern Brawl.  So how could that be possible?

Well, if you are familiar with the eSports scene, you have probably heard people referring to Hearthstone as a casual game. Casual, that seems like a good word to describe our beloved card game. You see, Hearthstone has a beautiful interface that makes the game very interactive and user friendly. The core game mechanics are super simple and very solid, making the game accessible for all kind of players. Those are very positive qualities, but why do people in the eSports scene use “Casual” as a negative remark? Well, that’s not the only thing that makes Hearthstone casual, the core complaint  from the “Casualstone” crew has to do with card design and balance. Hearthstone is a game that is clearly fun first, competition later, and obviously a lot of the Professional Players wish the competitive side of the game be taken more seriously and that there was (even) more effort put in improving Hearthstone as a competitive discipline.

So there are our two inns, we have two types of players that are looking for two things that at times feel diametrically opposed.

One one side, we have a crew that just wants to have fun, they love experimenting with new decks that use cool abilities, and mechanics. They enjoy the wild random effects of cards such as Piloted Shredder, Arcane Missiles, and what not. These are the kinds of players that will just open Hearthstone on their phone, play a few games without thinking too much about them and then move on.

But the other side of town has a more competitive public, they will grind the ladder for hours trying to get to the highest ranks of Legend. They will play extremely optimized decks that are constantly evolving to stay ahead of the meta. Their play gets to a level that it’s almost scientific, and they need it to be if they are to acheive their main goal of making it to the Blizzcon’s World Championship and being recognized as the best Hearthstone player in the World.

This is what makes Tavern Brawl so good for Hearthstone. Until now, the Hearthstone devs had to juggle to keep both crowds happy. Inside the same game, you have the solid strong cards, and then you have the super cool but competitively useless cards such as Nozdormu. But Tavern Brawl is a whole different thing, you can have as many cool cards with outrageous effect as you want. You can try, and test, and flesh out all these cool ideas that would take forever to implement in the real game. You can also make special rules that encourage you to play cards that would otherwise wouldn’t be used it competitive play. The possibilities are almost endless, and I’m excited to see what the future of Tavern Brawl will be, because it looks super bright.

While I can’t say I was a huge fan of the First Tavern Brawl. Personally, I’ve enjoyed the second one a lot better. This already shows how the different Tavern Brawls will appeal to different kinds of players, which is something that I find highly positive.

Do you agree that Tavern Brawl is one of the best things to ever happen to Hearthstone? Let me know your opinion on the comments below.