The Impact Factor

The Grand Tournament: Hearthstone, Power Creep, and Why You Shouldn’t Worry (For Now)

Perspective

My last Perspectives piece was decidedly too not-about card games, so I’m back here today to rectify that. So welcome to another surprise piece here on The Impact Factor! Don’t get too used to these mega-content weeks. I’m usually a pretty busy graduate student I swear.

This past Friday, August 14^th, Blizzard hosted a stream showing off a bunch of the new cards we can expect when Hearthstone’s next expansion launches later this month. The stream was shortly followed by a massive image dump on the Hearthstone Facebook page in which all of the set’s cards were revealed. As a huge fan of Hearthstone this got me super excited. There’s nothing quite as great as going through each and every card from a new expansion, reading the card text, seeing where it might fit into competitive play, and attempting to understand the design philosophy behind it. Overall, I’d say people were pretty happy with what was shown. There had been a lot of talk since we first started seeing new cards from The Grand Tournament that the expansion was pretty weak. While I disagreed and saw plenty of potential in a good handful of cards, I can understand where some of the complaints come from.

Balancing the power level of new cards in competitive card games like Hearthstone can be quite challenging. You want to incentivize your players to buy-in, and one of the easiest ways to do that is makig super powerful cards. At the same time, though, you need to balance just how powerful these new cards can be in the context of the existing card pool. Making old cards obsolete because they are strictly less powerful than new ones can push older or more invested players away from the game. It cheapens the investment they’ve made and can come off as a money grab. This tension is not so easily resolved. Of the many card games I’ve played, none have found the perfect way to add new powerful cards while maintaining the full power level of older ones.

So, what usually happens in these card games is a thing called “power creep.” Power creep is a phenomenon in collectible card games that arises due to this tension, resulting in new cards that are generally more powerful than cards released previously. The longer a game is around its cards will gradually become more and more powerful, to the point where cards that were once staples (used all the time in competitive decks) are so weak they don’t warrant inclusion in any deck. Power creep is nefarious. Because of this need to sell new cards, power creep will happen. In Magic the Gathering, power creep is the most evident when looking at creature cards. One of the best examples is Serra Angel versus Baneslayer Angel. For a long time, Serra Angel was a top tier card included in many decks. Then Baneslayer Angel was released. For the same cost, Baneslayer angel has better stats and more powerful effects. Why would anyone play the former over the latter in competitive play? The answer is simple: they wouldn’t and didn’t. Baneslayer Angel replaces Serra Angel, which is one of the worst kinds of power creep.

Serra Angel, meet your replacement.

Rarity is also a factor here. Serra Angel is an uncommon and Baneslayer Angel is a mythic, the rarest kind of card you can open in a pack. If players wanted to run a deck that would have used Serra Angel, they now needed to run Baneslayer Angel in its place. To do so would be a significant resource investment. You could open more packs in hopes to get a playset, trade valuable cards with other players for Baneslayer Angels, or outright buy the card individually (which can get quite expensive). Magic the Gathering has since taken steps to not print cards that are strictly better than previous cards, but creature power creep certainly still exists. It is imperative for designers to acknowledge the existence of power creep and work as best they can to slow its rate. Certain measures can be implemented to assuage the damage of power creep, such as card-pool-restricted formats, but since Hearthstone hasn’t taken any such initiatives I won’t go down that rabbit hole.

The Magic the Gathering example above will help frame my Hearthstone power creep discussion. The important things to take away are: use in competitive play, strict upgrades, and resource investment. Got it? Good.

Amidst all the excitement for new Hearthstone cards came a huge wave of negativity, centered around the power creep evident in two of the 132 new cards. The cards in question? Ice Rager and Evil Heckler. Fans of the game took to the forums and Twitter and wherever else people complain to express their outrage over the evil power creep evident in The Grand Tournament. The complaint was simple: Ice Rager is strictly better than Magma Rager and Evil Heckler is strictly better than Booty Bay Bodyguard (BBB). For them, this was a huge issue. Magma Rager and BBB are default cards i.e. you start with them in your collection when you first begin Hearthstone. By printing strictly better versions of those two cards in The Grand Tournament, Blizzard is making Magma Rager and BBB completely obsolete. The move shows clear power creep because the cards are strictly better and Blizzard is a money hungry monster.

The perpetrators. Ice Rager has 1 more health. Evil Heckler costs 1 less.

I’ll start with the points I can agree with. First, yes Ice Rager and Evil Heckler are strictly better, which is one of the tenants of power creep. And yes, maybe Blizzard wants money. They are a company, why wouldn’t they? The rest of the argument is misguided at best as it fails to consider the other two staples of true, insidious power creep.

A 3 mana 5/2 that's never played.

Magma Rager and BBB are two cards that are essentially unplayable. Their stats are terrible for their cost. Both die easily from attacks by smaller creatures or cheap spells due to their horrid health number. If I were to guess, Magma Rager and BBB exist to teach newer Hearthstone players a lesson about how important the health stat can be. So we’re already starting to tear at the façade of the power creep argument—neither Magma Rager nor BBB were seen in any competitive deck. Ice Rager and Evil Heckler do have strictly better stats, sure, but they are also not good enough to see competitive play. Druid already had a 3-mana 5/2 with Druid of the Flame and it doesn’t see play. Evil Heckler has a good stat total for the mana cost, but the 4 health makes it incredibly vulnerable to unfavorable trades (i.e. your opponent can kill it will a lower cost creature, weapon, or spell). While I can’t know for sure, I suspect neither Ice Rager nor Evil Heckler will see any competitive play. I think it’s pretty clear why this kind of power creep is not something to be worried about. If a strict upgrade of a card that is never played is still weak enough to be never played, players remain unaffected.

Now some may still take issue with the fact that strictly better versions of default cards even exist. I know the source of the frustration. Hearthstone is a game I would have easily recommended back around the first expansion, Goblins vs. Gnomes, because it was still decently easy for new players to get into from a cost & time perspective. Now with Blackrock Mountain out and The Grand Tournament forthcoming, Blizzard still has not put any substantial measures into place to help newer players deal with the growing cost of playing Hearthstone. In that way, making two of the few cards you do start with completely obsolete is just another of Blizzard’s many offenses. I get that. But when you frame it as a power creep problem, that’s where I’ll start to argue.

Both Ice Rager and Evil Heckler are commons. A pack contains about 3.5 commons on average. The pool of commons is pretty small in The Grand Tournament, so chances are good that you’ll open most commons you want within a (relatively) small number of packs. Further, crafting commons costs 40 Dust. The average dust you get from a pack is somewhere between 100-110. That means, in just two packs, you could have enough dust to have a full playset of both Ice Rager and Evil Heckler. If the two were good enough to see play, any player with 200 gold could get them (on average). That’s pretty easy. This refutes the other tenant of nefarious power creep: resource investment. Baneslayer Angel was a problem because it was so difficult and/or expensive to obtain. That’s not the case here. If Ice Rager and Evil Heckler were so good they were staples, it would only be an issue if they were Epic or Legendary rarity. You know, the ones that require a significant resource investment to obtain.

If you go by the most rigid and limited definition of power creep, sure, Ice Rager and Evil Heckler are a problem because they are strictly better than previously released cards. But failure to consider the impact of use in competitive play and resource cost ignores the bigger picture. Ice Rager and Evil Heckler are not the power creep you need to worry about. You know what is? Dr. Boom and Piloted Shredder.

Poor little guy.

Let’s first look at Dr. Boom. He is a legendary card that’s strictly better than another 7 mana card, War Golem. Dr. Boom fits all parameters of "evil" power creep. Is it strictly more powerful than another card? Check. Is it used in competitive play? Huge freakin’ check. Unless your deck is trying to always kill your opponent before turn seven, chances are you should consider adding Dr. Boom to your deck. Is it a significant resource investment? Check. On average, you open a legendary card in only 1/20 packs. The chances of opening a specific legendary like Dr. Boom are substantially lower. The cost to craft Dr. Boom is a whopping 1600 dust. So if we’re going by averages, that’s a minimum of 16 packs you need to dust. Ouch. Most agree Dr. Boom is the most powerful card in Hearthstone, and should be on the tip of anyone’s tongue that wants to talk power creep.

Yeah. Dr. Boom is just a bit too good.

Way worse than Shredder.

Piloted Shredder is more complicated example in the power creep discussion, but one that’s certainly worth mentioning. Piloted Shredder is not strictly better than previous 4 mana minions and it is common rarity. What’s really out of check is its use in competitive play. Summoning a 2 mana minion upon death is really powerful. The average stat of a two cost minion is ~2/2.5. This makes Piloted Shredder, on average, a 6/5.5 for 4 mana. When you compare that to other 4 drops, you can see how crazy that is. The generally accepted “good” stats for a 4 cost minion is 4/5. If you go higher than that the card will include some kind of drawback, like the 5/6 Hungry Dragon. Even when considering Hungry Dragon, though, Piloted Shredder still has better stats (on average) and has no drawback. Piloted Shredder is so good that no other four mana minion can compare, which leads to the question, “Why play [insert other 4-drop] when you can play Shredder?” And that’s a fair question. This makes Piloted Shredder exist in an interesting place in the power creep discussion. While not strictly better, it is significantly better (on average). It sees tons of competitive play. And, while cheap to create, it is so powerful you’re essentially forced to create and use it. I see that as a problem.

You'll have a hard time finding a better 4-drop.

I know this got long. My apologies. This whole thing got me kind of mad. I even ranted a bit about it on Twitter. In the end, Ice Rager and Evil Heckler are not the kind of power creep to worry about in Hearthstone. Dr. Boom and Piloted Shredder are. Enjoy The Grand Tournament. It looks fun. Check back here once it releases for a video of me opening 75+ packs. I’m really looking forward to it.