Breakfast Topic: Restrictions can be a good thing

Outside of the fact that the latest Hearthstone expansion revolves around one of my favorite areas of lore, one of the biggest reasons I’ve been drawn back into the game is the addition of Standard format. If you’re unfamiliar, Standard format limits the cards you can use to the most recent expansion. There are certainly more nuances to the mode, but the takeaway for a casual player like myself is that I don’t need to catch up to be on an even playing field. And this isn’t the first time restrictions have improved a game for me.

Overwatch’s latest brawl — an idea taken straight from Hearthstone — limits players to either Hanzo or Genji and only allows play on the Hanamura map. For a game that’s all about swapping through the 21-hero roster as the match needs, this brawl is the perfect way to shake things up. The best part is that it’s delegated to its own mode, so players can participate or abstain as they please. The same can be said for something like WoW’s Iron Man Challenge or our no-heirlooms leveling stream. While they’re not official modes from Blizzard, they’re still limitations that help make the game fun and challenging in ways it would otherwise not be.

Limitations aren’t always a good thing, but they’re not always a bad thing either — and I hope to see more of the latter implementation in Blizzard games in the future. Perhaps a weekly “heroes from [franchise] only” mode in Heroes of the Storm, or maybe some official form of the Iron Man in WoW.

What about you? What sort of “for fun” restrictions would you like to see added to games?