Hearthstone Galakrond Animations Temporarily Disabled

Galakrond Animations Temporarily Disabled
The Balance Testing problem and why Team 5 needs to change.
Hmmm
It's only the first week of the expansion guys, relax
Firestone - Hour-by-hour class popularity after release
What is battlecry synergy?
Aw Lawd, He Comin'
Battlegrounds it is
Battlegrounds easy mode
DoD brought back an old enemy
Now i know why they gave away Tyrande
Meanwhile, in wild, Murozond created new deck.
I’m not saying Galakrond Shaman is OP
Descent of Shamans
Dear Team 5: You need to act fast with Shaman nerfs or people will quit the game in droves.
Can you weather the storm?
At least i didn't pre-order
Generate a Draconic Lakey randomly> Discover Brightwing > Get Chameleos > Copy a fully invoked Galakrond > Think you are good at the game ✔️
Galakrond, Hearthstone's End
I know it's only been two days but...
Don't mind me over here with a stacked board on turn 4...
I thought we were in a new Meta
You love to see it
Just when evolve rotated and we thought we were safe
Long live 2/1’s with rush
So SHAMAN decks are getting BETTER while EVERY OTHER DECK is getting WORSE

Galakrond Animations Temporarily Disabled

Posted: 11 Dec 2019 04:18 PM PST

Hey Folks,

We are currently in the process of rolling out a hotfix that will disable the animations for Galakrond. The reason for this:

We've found multiple occurrences in which Galakrond's animations can cause the Hearthstone client to disconnect. The primary occurrence: when playing Quest Galakrond Shaman, we encountered (as well as received word) a bug where the client would disconnect after using Heart of Vir'naal + minions with the Invoke keyword.

This is just a temporary solution that will fix the client disconnects. We are aiming to ship a client patch within the next week that will be the long-term fix for this issue.

The team is continuing to keep an eye out for issues, so please do let us know if you encounter more pesky bugs 🐛

Cheers,
Chris_Attalus

submitted by /u/Chris_Attalus
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The Balance Testing problem and why Team 5 needs to change.

Posted: 12 Dec 2019 08:08 AM PST

Hey Zeddy here,

Many topics have already been posted in the first few days since the Descent of Dragons expansion went live about how shaman is overpowered and broken, has no bad matchups, and has already lead to a warped and unfun meta. There are the few that are responding with "it's only been a few days, wait for the meta to settle" but sadly if history is anything to go on is that we are in for yet another shamanstone meta until balance changes are implemented. This isn't the point of this thread though, what I want to explore is how this keeps happening, and why the play testing and balance testing when creating Hearthstone expansions and content is not working and needs to be changed.

Three of the last four Content Releases have lead to extremely imbalanced metas

The trend begins with the Rise of the Mechs event which saw 18 cards buffed and a new card introduced in snip snap. Right out of the gate Blizzard's playtesting showed to be inferior as an infinite OTK using snip snap and Reckless Experimenter was theorycrafted by users on twitter/reddit within hours of the reveal. This was an oversight admitted by Blizzard which lead to the nerfing of Reckless Experimenter. Snip snap also lead to arguably the most powerful wild deck of all time in SnipLock that was nerfed many months later after countless complaints over months from the wild community.

We also saw the buffing of Luna's Pocket Galaxy for mage. This immediately became a problem within cyclone mage that lead to auto wins on turn 5 and was further exacerbated by the release of Saviors of Uldum as the Reno Mage archetype was able to abuse Pocket Galaxy even further and lead to an extremely warped meta that consisted mostly of Reno Mage and Control Warrior. This was nerfed a couple weeks after release and really killed the hype of the expansion launch.

Then we had the release of the wild card event entitled Hallow's End. This saw the reintroduction of 23 wild cards back into standard which included evolve. Within a week the meta was shamanstone with Desert Hare + Evolve being the main culprit and was left this way for over 2 months as Mike Donais explained it took them a month to accumulate the data that the deck was unbalanced, that it would take another 2 weeks to patch, and that the event would be over in a few weeks anyways so it wasn't worth it. As a result ladder was widely abandoned due to this and the release of the new mode Battlegrounds.

Lastly we now have the release of Descent of Dragons where within the first few days we already have the beginnings of another age of shamanstone now with Galakrond Shaman. Although Iksar was able to save us from the madness that would've been a 3/3 Abyssal Summoner (https://twitter.com/IksarHS/status/1200590928244686849) somehow the power level of Shaman's Galakrond and its fellow invoke cards were overlooked and we now have a deck that has nearly no bad matchups (https://i.redd.it/m0qdsc4yf4441.png) and is already flooding the ladder and turning several people off from Hearthstone just days after expansion launch. Hell we even have infinite Shudderwock back with Barista + Faceless Corrupter which was nerfed out of the game back with the Saronite Chain Gang nerf nearly a year ago. I can only imagine this is another oversight by the team as I cannot see why they would want to introduce yet another infinite value OTK that they actively removed before.

What needs to change

Whatever playtesting Team 5 is utilizing is not working. We have had multiple infinite OTKs with Snip Snap and now Faceless Corruptor come back into the game, one of which they admitted was an oversight, nearly every content release has led to a one deck juggernaut that continues to upset and turn off players from continuing to play Hearthstone. As stated by Mike Donais himself the turn around on getting balanced patches is painfully slow so when these events occur it takes far too long to correct if they even bother to correct it.

What can actually be done then? One of the best resources I have seen other gaming companies use, including Blizzard themselves, is the use of Public Test Realms (PTR) to help with the testing and balancing of new features. Sign up a few top pros, have them sign NDAs, let them have a few days with all the proposed new cards and let them give you feedback on what is overpowered and there's a good chance they can spot things like snip snap/reckless experimenter etc. Case in point Zalae was given early access to Descent of Dragons, was able to build Quest Galakrond Shaman, and hit Rank 1 legend (https://twitter.com/ZalaeHS/status/1204589302375575553) with it on day one as he knew exactly what was broken with very limited play time. They even used this for Battlegrounds as they had players like Kripparian test the game before it's beta release and as seen here (https://clips.twitch.tv/DignifiedVictoriousYogurtBatChest) they picked up on some pretty broken stuff.

Another solution is to set up a better nerf infrastructure. If something is broken then set it up so that you can nerf things with hot fixes ASAP as seen in Battlegrounds and within Hearthstone itself in a timely fashion. Having your customer base suffer through over 2+ months of Evolve Shaman is ridiculous when we are mostly all loyal paying customers and your excuse is it would take too long. Make it so it doesn't take too long, this game has made millions upon millions, use just a fraction of that money to speed up the process.

Lastly have the design team focus more time on actual play testing and balancing. I don't have any inside knowledge on how much time is spent on it but it cannot possibly be enough if so many things are falling through the grapevine on a consistent basis. Hire more staff, have more people allocated to the balance team, or just spend more time overall on it. Whatever Team 5 is doing, it is not working at the current work rate.

Conclusion

This is not an acceptable failure rate in terms of launching new content and breaking the game of Hearthstone that we all love and want to see thrive. A lot of us stick around despite all of this but those numbers are dropping as time goes on. We shouldn't be dreading the release of new content and waiting for what is going to break the game, we should be excited to see all the different stuff that we will be able to play. We want to have fun playing your game, but facing one oppressive and uninteractive class per meta is not an enjoyable experience for most.

TL:DR - Past 3 of 4 content releases have created highly warped metas around 1 or 2 oppressive decks that have lead to unhealthy game play experiences. The introduction of a Public Test Realm, faster balance patch cycle, or additional resources to the balance/play test team could help alleviate this problem.

submitted by /u/Zeddy44
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Hmmm

Posted: 12 Dec 2019 05:06 AM PST

submitted by /u/Lesperald
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It's only the first week of the expansion guys, relax

Posted: 12 Dec 2019 05:49 AM PST

submitted by /u/meneldor_hs
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Firestone - Hour-by-hour class popularity after release

Posted: 12 Dec 2019 06:14 AM PST

submitted by /u/sebZeroToHeroes
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What is battlecry synergy?

Posted: 12 Dec 2019 05:26 AM PST

submitted by /u/BurtSnurpton
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Aw Lawd, He Comin'

Posted: 12 Dec 2019 09:50 AM PST

submitted by /u/BlackOctoberFox
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Battlegrounds it is

Posted: 12 Dec 2019 03:49 AM PST

submitted by /u/help4zeroes
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Battlegrounds easy mode

Posted: 12 Dec 2019 07:35 AM PST

submitted by /u/MisturrJosturr
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DoD brought back an old enemy

Posted: 11 Dec 2019 08:47 PM PST

submitted by /u/KillerWeed403
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Now i know why they gave away Tyrande

Posted: 12 Dec 2019 10:24 AM PST

submitted by /u/rbvilla90
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Meanwhile, in wild, Murozond created new deck.

Posted: 12 Dec 2019 12:41 AM PST

submitted by /u/Axlzz
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I’m not saying Galakrond Shaman is OP

Posted: 12 Dec 2019 07:41 AM PST

But I somehow piloted it to rank 5 (from rank 8) with a 100% win rate at around 3 am while nodding off to sleep. I was literally missing plays and turns, and one time my iPad fell on my face (I was laying against my upright pillow in bed).

But I have a lot of pending friend requests this morning so maybe it's not all bad.

submitted by /u/Ben_Tobith
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Descent of Shamans

Posted: 12 Dec 2019 10:03 AM PST

submitted by /u/deathu
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Dear Team 5: You need to act fast with Shaman nerfs or people will quit the game in droves.

Posted: 12 Dec 2019 08:34 AM PST

A lot of us were already sick of Shamanstone from the Doom in the Tombs Event. Most everyone quit playing Standard and opted for Battlegrounds instead, hoping, PRAYING to RNGesus above that the end of the Event and the release of the new expac would change things.

Well, you guys screwed up. I don't need to tell you how. You know how. But y'all need to act FAST with bringing out some nerfs. I don't mean "wait 2 months". I mean soon. Battlegrounds is no longer a solace either because that's ended up as Murlocgrounds.

Please PLEASE fix your game. It is UNPLAYABLE in this state. I was extremely excited for the new expac and yet somehow not only are we back in Shamanstone but it's 10x worse.

67% winrate, Blizzard. 67% winrate. Do something about this. There is no "waiting for the meta to shake out." There is no "magical unicorn deck" that will hardcounter it. This is not "overreacting". No other deck in the entire history of Hearthstone's expac launches have come out swinging like this. It wins vs EVERYTHING. It's worst matchup is itself at 50% (hmmm!!!)

I'm not saying do something based on only 2 days. But I am saying, don't wait 2 months either. The sooner you do the better because I can't play this game I love anymore because of the mess YOU made.

submitted by /u/Dibface
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Can you weather the storm?

Posted: 12 Dec 2019 12:52 AM PST