by JR Cook - 8 years ago     show comments

Last week, I pointed out several reason as of why Hearthstone should really look into rotating out  the Classic Set. But as we saw then, it is easier said than done. There are important factors which prevent the set from being cleanly removed from the Standard Format, and we’d like to mitigate them. Here’s a few of my ideas that would hopefully make the transition seamless.

Do not call it Standard

This probably deserves a whole separate article, but here is the main point: Hearthstone is mainly a casual game, and this Standard Format looks like something that will help balance and make the competitive scene less stagnant. But why are we forcing this new restricted format as the new Standard for all kinds of players? Blizzard should take a good look at its player base and use the Wild format as the Golden Standard. The format that rotates out different sets should be called something special, to denote that its not for everyone, to put extra emphasis on the fact that its mainly designed for those people who want to take the Hearthstone Challenge to the next level. The restricted format should be something like Progression Heroic Raids in World of Warcraft, something that isn’t really a main priority for the average player. A format where you can’t use all the cards, and you can’t pull of all of the high-variance random shenanigans isn’t going to feel standard for your average player, its going to feel alien. Blizzard should keep the “Anything Goes” format as “Standard”, and rename its restricted competitive format as something like “Competivive”, or “Hardcore”; better yet, give it some Warcraft flavor and call it “Heroic” or “Mythic”.

This way when a player returns to Hearthstone after a long break, they can jump right back into the standard game mode, using all of their old cards. I doubt someone would be extremely disappointing that they can’t jump right into a Hardcore Competitive mode after a long absence, right?

Expand the Basic Set

One of the reasons for keeping Classic around is how some of the class cards on the set are part of the core class identity. But that’s not a valid reason for keeping all of a set around, take a few key important cards from classic, and maybe even from the sets that are being rotated out, and add them up to the basic set. I understand that basic set cards are simple in design, as they are introductory to new players, so maybe we shouldn’t mess with that– Instead, we could easily create the “Advanced Set”, which would be rewarded at a higher class level and would contain interesting cards of higher rarity and complexity.

Giving the player free key epics such as Preparation, Cabal Shadowpriest, Shield Slam,  or Lay on Hands would be a welcome addition to newer players playing catch-up, and this would allow to better balance the classes, as you could include cards from any expansion on this Advanced Set and you could make sure that we have a balanced class baseline in Standard. At this point a card like Muster for Battle feels like a real Paladin Core card, and it would look a bit weird to see it go. Especially when the Basic/Classic toolset for Paladin leaves a lot to be desired.

Maybe you could even tie this advanced set to “class quests”, or rewards for an achievement-like system. Deal over 25 face damage during the first 3 turns with Shaman in three separate games and get a free Doomhammer? Sounds like fun times in casual to me.

This would also do a lot to silence those people who are saying that the Set Rotation is just a money grab from Blizzard.  Making the life easier for Free-to-Play players is probably going to help a bit with player retention.

What about Yearly Compilation Sets?

But there’s always the people who are going to complain about new players getting these cards for free when they had to pay for them, maybe instead of an “Advanced Set” that you can unlock, you could just print out Sets that contain mainly reprinted cards from older expansions. These sets should be way easier to produce and could be fit into the yearly schedule without disrupting development too much. You could use this set to keep specific cards from Older Expansions in the meta, and rotate them out year after year, maybe we want to see what a year would look like when Big Game Hunter and the Giants are not a part of the meta, but you don’t really want to commit to the decision.

Having Lets say a “Kraken Set” with select cards from Classic, Naxx, and GvG cards, would make it easier for returning players to see that even if their entire collection isn’t playable in the new competitive format, at least a few cards are still valid. Just please don’t reprint Dr. Boom and Piloted Shredder.

The other advantage would be having a recommended pack to sell in the shop, since these cards would mostly come from the simpler classic set. Since a lot of the Classic Card would be printed over and over on these Yearly sets, it would still be a rather safe investment of the players Gold and Cash.

Do you have more ideas of how to minimize the impact that rotating Classic out would have? Share it with me using the comment section below or simply send me a tweet. If you are looking for more interesting Hearthstone content, I recommend this cool infographic on secrets.