The Future of Wild – Are Two Constructed Formats Enough?

When Hearthstone first split into two formats in 2016, it was a huge, but correct move. Introducing Standard was meant to have a number of positive effects on the players experience. And it did – while Standard was closely resembling Wild at first (because Wild had only two more sets), as new expansions were coming in and out, Standard was changing heavily and Wild’s name was finally relevant – the format was definitely more Wild. Ever since formats were introduced, the approach to these two was completely different – Standard was meant to be curated, balanced and “fresh”, while Wild was meant to be slowly changing, but getting more and more out of control with time. A format where people can run their old cards and try out all kinds of strategies that were ever viable in Standard (and even more – the deeper we go, the more combos that were never available in Standard are present there).

At least in theory. Because in reality, I feel like neither players, nor Blizzard really know what they want from the less popular format. My initial understanding of the split was that the Wild format will get gradually more and more broken, and that Blizzard wouldn’t touch that – because balancing it would just turn it into a second Standard, just slightly different. However, more recently, Wild players were very concerned about balance of some cards (or rather lack of thereof) – first Naga Sea Witch and now Juicy Psychmelon. And I can’t deny that both of those turn out to be very problematic in an eternal format, so there’s nothing wrong with asking for a nerf. But doesn’t it push the format in the opposite direction of what it was meant to be?

How “Wild” Should Wild Format Be?

First of all, let’s start by stating the obvious. The more sets are released, the more out of control Wild format will get. That’s something you can’t stop. Even with no power creep, even if sets would release below the current Wild power level, there will always be some cards that synergize too well with what’s already printed. One of the main reasons behind introducing Standard was to open design space. Because, to put it simply, card design is like walking around a mine field – you take one wrong step and you can blow everything up. The more cards are in the format, the more mines you have to tiptoe around. Which leads to a simple equation. More cards = harder to balance format. While Wild is still relatively new, the problem already starts showing. There are between ~900 and ~1,200 cards in Standard format at the same time, depending on which expansion we’re on. There will never be more than ~1200 cards to balance around, unless Blizzard’s current approach to expansions change. In Wild, there’s already over 1,700 cards, and the number will keep growing by ~135 (again, if nothing changes) every four months. It means that in five years, the Wild format will hit ~3,700 cards – more than three times of what Standard will ever have at the same time.

To make a long story short, while it’s not that bad now, Wild format will be hell to balance eventually. In order to keep everything in check, every new card would need to be balanced not only around those up to 1,200 Standard cards, but all of the cards that have rotated already as well. Let me give you a current day example. Adding a very powerful defensive tool to Mage might be balanced in Standard, because the class has lost Ice Block. But the same tool might suddenly be way too strong in Wild, because Ice Block still exists there. It might turn combo Mage decks into unstoppable machines that can’t be killed until they OTK you. Another, real life example of a card that’s problematic only in Wild is the recently notorious Juicy Psychmelon. The card is not played in any Standard deck, because it’s honestly not that strong in the format. It’s pretty clunky and Druid has no 7-8-9-10 minions they REALLY want to draw every game. However, in Wild, the card just draws their entire combo, which usually wins the game on the spot when played – so it’s just a matter of ramping enough to play it now (and that’s not a big deal either). There will be more and more Psychmelons with every expansion, not the other way round.

But how exactly can Blizzard handle that problem? When it comes to the Wild format, I’d say that there are two main ideas. First one is simple – just leave it be. Metas will form by themselves, people will adapt, and eventually everyone will be playing broken strategies. But since everyone will be broken, it’s almost like no one was. Games will most likely be much shorter, because people will rush the opponent down or pull their broken strategies faster and faster. Eventually, it might even turn into a format where Turn 1-2 kills are possible with the right starting hand. The second is to just balance it, treat it like Standard, with relatively common balance patches. Whenever a problematic card or strategy pops out, get rid of it. It would make the format more balanced, at least for now.

Given everything I’ve said above, I actually don’t think that a second is even remotely possible in the long run. One problem is that Standard is still the main format – nerfing cards that are okay in Standard just because they’re problematic in Wild is not the best option. A way to fix that would be introducing a separate set of balance rules for Standard & Wild – they COULD nerf Psychmelon in the Wild format, while leaving it intact in Standard, but that adds more problems than it solves. As much as “too confusing for new players” is a meme, this kind of change might actually be too confusing – you step into another format, play a match and the cards that you thought you know are doing something different than you’ve expected. It’s not a problem with one or two cards, but eventually dozens of even hundreds of cards might have to be balanced that way. However, that’s not even the main issue. Even if we could balance those formats separately, I don’t believe that it would be achievable forever. Like I’ve mentioned already, at one point Wild will become nearly impossible to balance. They will never print the new cards tiptoeing around the eternal Wild format, so the chances of expansion introducing new cards that are too powerful in Wild is higher and higher every year. At some point, a dozen cards would need to be nerfed every expansion just to keep everything in check. It just feels like a Sisyphean task – they would work hard over the expansion to keep everything in check, and the entire balance would crumble again when a new set is out.

There’s also a middle-ground option. Blizzard could leave the format alone for the most part, but intervene when some card is really, and I mean really overpowered, or absolutely not fun to face. Like they did with Naga Sea Witch before. But if they put Standard before Wild (which they probably would), only cards that are Wild-only could be nerfed like that, leaving the format with a better, but still pretty questionable balance in the end.

So Maybe We Need More Constructed Formats?

To answer that question, yes, I do believe that Hearthstone needs more formats. The current two don’t feel like enough. We have Standard, which is meant to be competitive and curated, and we have Wild, which no matter what, will eventually be too difficult to balance and will be the crazy format where everything’s possible. But there’s nothing in between. However, while I think that Hearthstone would use more formats, adding them is not as easy as one might think. Despite obvious upsides, there are also some clear downsides. I’ll try to list both of them below.

Pros

• The more formats we have, the more fun Hearthstone will be. As a mostly Standard player, I know that getting into Wild from time to time (I play Wild casually, ending around R4-R2 every season) is a very cool experience. I would love to experiment with other formats too. There are also players who don’t particularly like either of the two we have right now, but they would definitely play something else.
• More formats means that the Wild problem can be resolved while keeping everyone happy – those who want Wild in a way it will eventually be (an unbalanced mess) will have it. And those who want it to be more balanced, but still want to play with their old cards could get their own format.
• Some formats could be more F2P friendly – like a Basic & Classic cards only format. While it’s not an ultimate solution, making the game more F2P friendly is also good in the long run, as it will keep the new players coming.

Cons

• It separates the playerbase. That’s the main reason why Hearthstone can’t have too many formats – the more you introduce, the less popular each one will be. It’s not a problem for Standard, as it will likely be the #1 format no matter what happens, but if an already smaller Wild playerbase had to split between two or three new formats, there might be some matchmaking issues. One way to solve that would be to allow cross-play between servers, but that comes with its own pros & cons.
• As a sub-point to the previous one, what is an even bigger issue is splitting the COMPETITIVE playerbase. The general playerbase is big enough to support a bunch of new formats, there’s no problem at all finding Wild games at lower ranks. But the higher you go, the worse it gets – you can feel that there aren’t many Wild players at high ranks, especially early in the season. In order to fight against that, some of the formats could be made 100% Casual (no ladder, no rankings), but it wouldn’t really work for every single one.
• More formats = more resources needed to maintain them. If the format would be curated like Standard, Team 5 would need much more resources to also playtest all of the cards in that format, would need to make balance changes around it etc. If a format would feature some extra set of rules, limitations and such, those would also have to be carefully picked and tested. Ideally, it would be nice if format had their own events and such. Also the technical aspect is important – implementing new format is harder than just adding a few lines of code.

What Other Formats Might Look Like?

So now that we’ve established that Blizzard can’t just throw in as many formats as they can, a solid question would be “how many should they add?” I think that two extra formats would be a sweet spot. While Hearthstone is still managing to keep most of its playerbase, as well as attracting some new players, it’s hard to say how long it will last. When there are a lot of players, having more formats is feasible, but if the playerbase would shrink in the future, making too many formats right now might mean that they will die out, because there won’t be enough people to play them. We also need to remember that there are already other formats – just not constructed ones. Arena is a format with a significant amount of players too, Tavern Brawl is yet another format, and I know that a lot of folks play Hearthstone only for the Brawls. Even PvE modes like Dungeon Run are formats that lots of people enjoy.

All that said, in my opinion, two new formats would still be the best, but with one important restriction – one format would be a normal, competitive format, and the other one would be casual (without ladder, without any ranks). The latter would not attract that many competitive players, not splitting the high ranked playerbase that much.

And here is the list of other formats that could be added into the game. Of course, those are only some of my favorite examples – the truth is that there are many more potential options, but exploring all of them would be impossible in a single article. Given the non-physical nature of the game, Blizzard could be really creative and implement stuff no other card game has done before. Or they could take a safe route and copy some formats that were already tested by other TCGs.

• Classic (Casual) – We’re going to have a Classic WoW, so why not a Classic Hearthstone? This one is very simple, yet it might be appealing to some. The format would only have Basic + Classic cards, no more than that. Ideally, cards that were rotated out to Hall of Fame would be included. Maybe even nerfed cards would be un-nerfed for the format to resemble the release version of Hearthstone as closely as possible. Upside of such a format would be being very F2P / returning players friendly. You could easily craft a deck there, and it would always stay relevant. You could come back two years from now and it would be the same. However, that upside is also a big downside – the format would get very tiring after a while, since once players would realize what the best meta looks like, it would likely stay that way forever. Still, I would be really interested in seeing how the Classic meta would look like right now, once we have years of experience with the game, deck building and such.
• Pauper (Casual) – And this one I like more than Classic, because besides being F2P friendly, it wouldn’t be so stale. Pauper format originated in Magic the Gathering, and it’s a format in which only Common cards are available. Since rarities don’t translate 1:1 from MTG to Hearthstone, I would say that there are two possibilities of implementing it here – only Common cards, or only Common & Rare cards. Epics and Legendaries would be absolutely disallowed. Pauper format introduces an interesting dynamic, where every single deck is basically a budget deck. It might seem that it would disqualify Control decks from seeing play, but that’s not necessarily true. While it’s true that a lot of the slow deck’s win conditions are Legendary, they are often played to counter other slow decks, not to fight against Aggro. You can build a viable anti-Aggro deck without playing Epics & Legendaries. Normally such a deck would work very poorly against other Control decks, but in that kind of format, other Control decks would also have those tools unavailable. Now, the main question is whether to base Pauper on Standard or Wild – this is a tough choice and I could see merits for both of those options, but I’d be leaning towards Standard.
• Enchanted (Casual) – Every month, a new “enchantment” would be applied, changing basic rules of the game. At the start of new season, the current set of enchantments would be lifted, and a new one would take its place. Enchantments could be positive, negative or neutral modifiers that would change how the game is played. Depending on how “strong” they are, between 1 and 3 could be applied at the same time (e.g. one big enchantment, or three that aren’t very impactful). When it comes to the enchantment themselves, we could have all sorts of them. They could buff or nerf certain type of cards or even outright ban them. E.g. “Spells cost (1) mana more”, “Minions start with one extra point of health”, “No Deathrattle cards allowed”, or “Only Class cards available”. But the simple ones like that would be just the beginning – just like with Tavern Brawls, they could come up with all sorts of stuff that are impossible in regular games. “Players draw an extra card at the end of each turn”, “All minions explode on death, damaging adjacent minions for 2”, or even “You can play an extra copy of each card in your deck” (so 3 for non-Legendaries and 2 for Legendaries). All of those modifiers would heavily change how the game is played, making each month’s experience unique. The only issue here is that despite some major differences, the format might feel too similar to Tavern Brawl. They could solve it by making Tavern Brawls non-Constructed (you always play with premade or random decks, like playing as a Boss, such as Ragnaros), while leaving the “crazy” Constructed rules for Enchanted.
• Limited (Competitive) – Limited would be a Standard format, but with heavy bans. However, to make things more interesting, the bans would change every single month – 50, or maybe even 100 most popular cards from the last month would be unavailable next month. It would force a massive meta change every month. However, since the meta has shifted now, a bunch of other cards would now be banned. Does it mean that the game would just return to the state of previous month and people would play the cards that were initially most popular again? Well, to a certain extent yes, but given that a lot of new cards would be banned now, many of the strategies would not be unavailable. Everything would get even more crazy thanks to the expansion releases – the ban rule would still apply, getting rid of X most popular cards from the last month, but new cards would be added to the pool. This would be a perfect format for people, who love meta that changes quickly, enjoy playing off-meta decks, but can also adapt very quickly to the new situations. It would be a real deck building challenge, but gameplay would also be more difficult than the Standard one, since you would need to adapt your strategies (what cards you play around, what win condition you pursue in each matchup) to the current ban list.
• Extended (Competitive) – Extended would be like Standard, but with more expansions available. This is really up in the air, but I think that 4 years worth of expansions would be right amount. Extended would be very similar to today’s Wild, a mode in which you can play with many more cards, different strategies are available etc. But at the same time, since old sets would rotate out eventually, the pool of cards wouldn’t increase indefinitely, meaning that it wouldn’t become as broken as Wild eventually will. The format would appeal to the current Wild players that want Wild to be more competitive in the long run. If it was released, the current Wild could also be turned into a Casual format, again, not to split the competitive playerbase between the two formats (because let’s be honest, given enough time, Wild won’t be very competitive-friendly).
• Rotating (Competitive) – This one is probably my favorite. Rotating format would consist of a few different sets that rotate out every now and then. It would be like Wild, in a way that you would always be able to play the oldest sets in Rotating, but it would be way more balanced, because it would include only a few sets at the time. I thought that Basic / Classic + 3 different expansions would be the way to go, but then again, maybe it would be better if it ditched the Basic/Classic completely. Or rather, just add it to the rotation – sometimes Basic/Classic cards would be available, other times they wouldn’t. It would be very interesting, because Blizzard could combine the sets thematically or mechanically, and they could always avoid the most broken synergies by not putting certain expansions together. Now, the main question is – how often would they rotate? On the one hand, a month seems fine if we want to have a fresh meta all the time, but on the other, it might not be enough time to play around with the current set of cards. I think that 2 months would be perfect – first month for the meta to stabilize, and second to play in a stable meta. New expansions could also be guaranteed to be a part of the rotation on the month they’re released so people from that format could immediately play with new cards (and so it wouldn’t cripple the sales of packs, which is also important from the Blizzard’s perspective). For example, current rotation could be Boomsday + Goblins vs Gnomes + Mean Streets of Gadgetzan (with or without Classic, depending on what the final decision would look like). It would last throughout August (the first few days until Boomsday’s release would be played without it) and September, and it would change with the start of October season. October/November season could be, for example, Naxxramas + Whispers of the Old Gods + Knights of the Frozen Throne + The Witchwood. Then in December, it would again be a new expansion + let’s say 2 or 3 other expansions.

Closing

Of course, keep in mind that everything I’ve listed above is just a small portion of potential formats that could come to Hearthstone, and is mostly what I would like to see in one form or the other. Despite a clear downside of splitting the playerbase, I feel like Hearthstone desperately needs a new format or two – not necessarily now, but in the long run. The game would be more healthy with more options, and the players would be more happy, as there would be a higher chance for them to find something that fits their play style.

That said, I would love to hear your opinion about the whole matter. Do you play Wild? What direction do you think it should head? Would you like to see more formats to compensate for the loss of “competitive Wild” that will eventually get difficult, or even nearly impossible to balance? And if yes, what kinds of constructed formats would you enjoy playing?

Be sure to let me know in the comments below. Good luck on the ladder and until next time!