Do you plan going F2P in the future? Or will you still buy at least one of the bundles?
I feel like even the small bundle is enough to keep up with most of the meta, you just have to chose your legendarys wisely. Focus on the decks you want to play and not on the class would be my advice.
Disenchanting an entire class is not even that profitable. Assuming you got all cards of the class, you would only get 1350 dust per expansion for disenchanting everything.
800 for the 2 legendarys
400 for epics
150 for rares and commons.
If you realy need the dust, disenchant some useless legendarys from older expansions that never will see play (Griftah, Harbringer Celestia, Duskfallen Aviana, ...)
already done that.. yeah probably only buying the 50 packs bundle+3k cold. hope that will be enough for most of the time
Well think of past expansions, have you crafted cards that, say, a few weeks later you stopped using? Or decks that you thought were good and found out just didn't work out? Or decks you thought were fun and bored you after a while? I know in my case that's where a TON of my dust went off to. I would see a deck I want to craft, dust bunch of things to make it, then in a week stop using it. Then later I would need to craft the cards I dusted before. Meanwhile I STILL regret crafting Shudderwock right after the Witchwood expansion. That's 1600 dust I could've used to make the murloc warleaders that's keeping me from any decent murloc deck, for example.
If you aren't a Whale, the #1 most important resource is your dust. That, far more than gold, will determine whether you feel you 'have enough' in an expansion. I don't care if you want to solo one class or play every class, whether you play for fun or for competition, whether you suck or are good, crafting the right cards will give you the decks you need for the entire set while crafting the wrong ones will make that gold and cash seem worthless.
Don't think about how much of your collection you have or what legendaries you open. Open your packs, then think and research very VERY hard on what decks you actually REALLY want to be playing for the next 4 months. Go watch streamers, or tournaments, or use the deckbuilder, or whatever, but LOOK at those decks and think "I'm going to be running this for 4 months. Am I SURE this will do for me?" If you go this route I would say, pick about 5-7 of them perhaps.
Once you say YES to those decks, then look at your collection, see which of those decks will require the least amount of dust to craft. Then see how many you can make with the dust you have. Note that this is BEFORE dusting golden cards or duplicates, nevermind your bad cards, NEVERMIND any other dusting. JUST the dust on hand. Craft THOSE decks. Then play them.
After that, if you want to craft a new deck, start with the cheapest to replicate, and start with dusting and ONLY dust just enough to make THAT ONE deck. Myself I rarely hit the 'dust dupe' button: I manually kill enough duplicates to make THAT deck. Once I'm out of those, I dust the goldens, then the bad wild cards, then the bad standards, then so on. But usually long before then I am too busy playing the decks I already made to do anything else. Right now I'm OBSESSED with Muck Shaman, so once I made that I haven't had a reason to make anything else. Even if a quest demands a different class I just use the autocomplete to make 'the best deck' to get wins off of, or else use Brawl.
The idea is to limit the dusting to just what you need to be content. Make a few decks, play it, just make enough decks till you are happy with your decks, then stop. And make it just 'annoying' to dust to make you think. I've had a few decks that I wanted to craft then, when going to collectio nto hunt for goldens I went "do I REALLY want this deck?" and realized, not REALLLLLYY, so I didn't.
If that big mess of text helps then it might make these next few sets easier to handle for your budget and collection.
TL:DR SUMMARY
1. Dust is PRECIOUS. For anyone not a whale, this will make or break your enjoyment of a set. Treat it like happiness-wrapped Gold.
2. Be aware of past times when dust was misused: decks you crafted then stopped playing soon after. cards you later stopped using. ext. That's wasted dust that could've been used elsewhere.
3. Be systematic in a new set: Know WHAT exactly you want. Know the decks that WILL get them to you. You don't need ever deck in an expansion, just the RIGHT ones that you will be able to play for 4 MONTHS without giving up on them.
4. Start with the deck that requires the least amount of dust. Then make those, play those. Then slowly add more expensive ones until you're 'happy' with the decks you have. Then STOP.
5. Don't make dusting easy. Don't pre-dust. Dust only as needed. That INCLUDES that blasted 'dust duplicates' button. If you need to dust, rethink "do I REALLY want this deck?" Make SURE you do.
First off, let's call it "Custom Games" because that is a more realistic, and more importantly, an ACHIEVABLE approach. The idea of buffing and nerfing cards in client is honestly asking for trouble even if it's a Custom Game between friends, so scrap that as an idea because it simply can't happen.
That's one thing that's always bugged me about HS is that we can't make our own rules in client without have to DM our friends to set it up. Or have a mode, like I don't know, BRAWL BLOCK, that changes monthly and could put these rules in. Like, how would have KFT looked without DK's?
Firstly, as far as 'custom games' 'asking for trouble' even if it's between friends: as a person who supports the concept of a 'custom' mode between clans/guilds (note I also support us having clans/guilds) I am deeply curious as to what makes such a concept a bad one.
If it's something that's unfeasable or impossible coding wise, that's a developer issue and something that should be determined and voiced by Blizzard. Our job here is to figure out whether it's something that we would want to happen IF it's feasable to develop. Unless you have some insight to how it is on the developer side.
I mean you might, which is why I'm asking.
Point is, what do you mean by it's 'asking for trouble' and it 'simply can't happen'?
Secondly as far as 'brawl block' I believe the Brawls help demonstrate the problem with it. We have weekly brawls that make different rules in how we play, sometime in ways you cannot recreate naturally, such as removing the RNG from the card draw or limiting a deck to just 4 cards, or just crazy stuff in general. We generally get bored of it by the end of the week with the meta 'solved' long before then. A month of any of them would be either ignored or raged at.
I'm hoping that the set blocks they've done have shown better numbers. I enjoyed them and so much want a mode of that, but I'm sure Blizzard is keeping a heavy record of how the playerbase is truly handling these events. Thing is, if it IS proven to be good enough for a full mode, we won't know about it for at least a few months if not a full year while they develop it (Tournament mode SHOULD've taught them not to talk about anything that isn't ready). If it's proven to be something we think we want but don't, we won't know until a year or two later when they answer an AMA question and say "we looked into it and found it diddn't really work out.
In any case, at least as far as the set blocks is concerned, we'll get it if we REALLY showed we want it.
At the end of the day a F2P Player has only two choices
1. Either invest into competitive meta decks for multiple classes which will hinder your deck experimentation, trying multiple formats in the long term.
or
2. Invest into a single class where you can taste almost everything this game has to offer to some extent. A huge problem is that the class you have selected can face a slump & then you will be in slump too & it can happen quite often.
But no matter how much you try you will be a few step behind to able to access everything this game has to offer without spending anything. It's not impossible but quite a daunting task. So pick your poison.
There are two other options:
1. Invest in decks you find fun that aren't that competitive. Of those this means that you don't have a meta deck. It's basically the fliped coin of the #1 option and still translates to not being able to taste everything.
2. The hedge. The key to remember that to compete you really only need at most 2 decks. For example, anyone who has crafted a Conjure's Calling Mage is pretty much done as far as reaching Legend.
Thus a F2P player CAN just craft said deck then just spend the rest of the dust on crafting whatever they find interesting. A F2Per woh enjoys Muck Shaman, Conjure's Mage, Bomb Warrior, and Mech Hunter can craft all four decks effectively*. At that point you not only have THREE meta relevant decks but a third tier meme deck on top of it. If you dislike Bomb or Hunter you have room for another meme deck like res priest or Tess Rogue.
(I have Much and Hunter, I'm one legendary away from Bomb and I have enough dust that I can literally dust every single mage card in the Conjure's mage deck I already own, spend it making a Murloc Druid and handcraft every single card, including legendaries to fully form it and not miss a beat on preparing for the next set. Note that I literally only play an average of 3 games a day, average 3 wins in arena, and havn't hit above rank 10 in about 2 years. I'm the poster child for casual. Point is, making those four decks is NOT a hard thing for an established F2P player)
The PROBLEM is that you can probably make about 3-4 decks per set that require a hefty investment (as in, at least one legendary's worth of cards) so you have to make SURE you hit paydirt. Make a bomb Warrior and find you hate it.. such a shame. Made Pogo Rogue because you swore it was going to be The #$)#(.. ikk.
So what you sacrifice is basically that first month of a new set. You sit playing Wonderful decks and spamming arena to gather dust/packs. You ignore the hype and experimental phase. You wait until Tournaments and pro players perfect their meta decks and folks like Kibler sort out the fun meme decks from the boring ones.
So it's a way to both play competitively AND play fun decks, but you don't get to experiment and try and fail. You CAN'T fail.
So you can Play compeititively, Play memeish, Wait a long time then netdeck for both, or go single class. That's the price of going free.
Which i don't mind. F2P should NOT be the same as paid. Otherwise it might as well just be a Free Game. The point isn't whether paying means more fun: it should be. The point is whether F2P is enough fun. If I were to eliminate all of the paid content does it feel like a full game you can enjoy? If so then that's fine.
As far as Hearthstone, I don't know whether it's easier or harder than the distant past as I didn't get established till around Old Gods. I DO know that once established the game became much easier to keep up with and one of the better games I've played in this mode. Getting TO established though was NOT an easy feat and was getting harder and harder up to Old Gods. I have no clue how anyone could survive the Old Gods meta if they literally started playing at that point. By how it sounds it's somewhat easier now but still can go a long way to making it easier for new players to get into the game.
Bringing back old cards is VERY messy. All it take is one Spreading Plague or a [Hearthstone Card (Firelance Portal) Not Found] to completely gut the balance of a meta, especially since the old sets are meant to be balanced between each other and NOT with future sets. Besides, Standard is meant to be for pulling NEW cards, not the old ones. If I honestly wanted to play with the old sets I would go to Wild.
Myself I very much prefer the method used last set: buff cards from last year's set. It provides more of what you are looking at, is easier to manage since the basic design of the cards are already meant to exist in standard, and if they DO change the meta it's for a very short time (in case anyone didn't notice: Sn1p Sn4p is technically a Boomsday card, so he's gone next year).
If they bring a way to mix old and new cards, it should be entire sets. I'm ALLLL for a new format similar to the brawls where different sets are combined.
Honestly, the last set did a great job of solving the old problems of staleness. By the time we finally establishd a stable meta we were a week into the card release period of Uldun. That was caused by a new set, a nerfing a month in and a buffing the following month. That along with combining the delayed eleaes of the single player and good brawls on top of it and...well.. just moar of that. They can literally lock down the dates, make it a normal thing.
It's a rough thing. We've had a number of eras where many of the content providers stuck to the game because any other game wouldn't produce nearly as many views. They are all now very happy with the game nowadays.
There's also the consideration that content providers aren't 'playing a hobby'. They are doing a job. There's a line between hobby and job when you realize that you aren't doing something just for yourself but for someone else. That's when you realize you can't just change or keep something because you prefer it.
But that's about the content provider. Whether they stay in hearthstone when they don't enjoy it is based on how much of what they do is a hobby and how much is it a job. And them staying for the sake of work is...well.. just like staying in any job when things turn meh.
As far as hearthstone's health...it depends.
If the person has been playing for a long time and simply wants to move on then that's just life. So long as new people step in to take their place then the game simply grows to the next generation. If they dislike the game due to negative aspects though, it's a bad sign for the game, though far from unrecoverable.
Note that whether they DO leave is almost not an issue. A person who is 'done' but stays while burnt out and a person who leaves instead does about the same damage overall. Stagnating providers eventually lose their drive, which eventually turns off the public wihle making the game feel just as stale. People that leave, meanwhile, bring woe and doomsayers. Stay or go, te public knows you no longer want to play and will react accordingly.
So point is, it doesn't really matter if they stay or go. Once they are burnt out, their reasons for feeling so are enough to affect the game, whether it's just a sign of the game moving to a new group or a sign of the game getting worse. From there, actually staying or going only really affects the content provider.
I guess KotFT was a unique expansion with huge power level because of the unbalanced game. There was almost only Jade Druids and Pirate Warriors in Ladder and it seemed like it can't be change. So it is like a "must to do" i guess. Or I'm wrong again i really don't know but I want to believe in this.
Well, it was more of the theme that did it. That expansion wasn't just some random hearthstone made event.
This is the Frozen Throne. Lich King. Death Knight! The topic is literally the most important event in all that is Warcraft Lore.
People have been clamoring for this set since Hearthstone was first made. It's going to go *BIG*. Note that they work on sets about 2-4 sets in advance. Thus KotFT started development somewhere between Old Gods and One Night: BEFORE the game filled up with Jades and Pirates.
Battlecry: Both players discard 3 cards and draw 3 cards. [7 mana, 7 attack, 7 health, Legendary][
Same stats as boom, but VERY disruptive to combo decks with the right timing. Best guess I have to the reason for the change was due to an earlier philosophy of not wanting cards that 'ruin' other people's fun. The new card is less powerful because..well.. have you SEEN most legendaries back then? Blizzard wasn't that great in high mana legendary cards back then. He's kept as is now because of a new philosophy of not wanting Classic to be the Go To set for most deck design. if we see him in an expansion, he'll probably get a MUCH better design.
Dr. Boom being better was a surprise to everyone. We all mocked him when he was revealed, and I'm betting he was meant to be a meme. However, he was literally the only 7 drop that wasn't absolute garbage ONLY because he actually DID something to the board. Part of why Dr. Boom shows up so often now is because of how absolutely silly that an uncared for thing in WoW turned into such a big name in here. And it shows in his designs as someone who gets no respect and, by all impressions, should be worthless but actually ends up being the most effective.
(seriously, the entire POINT to Shadows, and the main conflict of Uldun starts with us literally stealing an entire city by strapping rockets on it)
So basically, (TL:DR SUMMARY)
Illidan was good but didn't fit the old card design, so he got remade.
He was remade bad because we used to suck at card design.
He's going to remain bad because new set design won't let him be good again.
That Dr. Boom isn't worthless while he is shows just HOW bad we sucked at card design in 2014-15.
And Illidan seriously needs to be a prominent figure in a set sometime.
I guess KotFT was a unique expansion with huge power level because of the unbalanced game. There was almost only Jade Druids and Pirate Warriors in Ladder and it seemed like it can't be change. So it is like a "must to do" i guess. Or I'm wrong again i really don't know but I want to believe in this.
Well, it was more of the theme that did it. That expansion wasn't just some random hearthstone made event.
This is the Frozen Throne. Lich King. Death Knight! The topic is literally the most important event in all that is Warcraft Lore.
People have been clamoring for this set since Hearthstone was first made. It's going to go *BIG*. Note that they work on sets about 2-4 sets in advance. Thus KotFT started development somewhere between Old Gods and One Night: BEFORE the game filled up with Jades and Pirates.
All of the above. Depends on a card. They said so many times in interviews ;-)
This is correct.
In some cases, they know the character they want to add, but have to figure out what sort of effect it will do or how it will look. The Death Knights are a good recent example: they knew they wanted all of the classes to be 'death knights' early on but had no clue how that would actually play out. They were literally weeks from finishing the set before they even figured the answer out.
In other cases, they know of a great mechanic or card they want to add, then have to decide what sort of character will that fit that card. Reborn, IIRC, has been in mind for a while now without even a set to put it in, nevermind artwork or the character.
Sometimes, the whole card basically plops in their face and it just needs tweaks. The second they knew Old Gods was going to be the thing C'thun's design basically flew together including how it needs to grow over time and 'loom' over the game and how it should be devastating but not QUITE game ending. The design was more about tweaking than figuring anything out.
So yeah, there's no direct sequence. Each card comes to life in different ways.
Well, you can say that Skulking Geist is a jade hate card and I can understand that but it also save people from Inner Fire bullshit, which is really frustrating to see from beta to 5th year.
As soon as it has gone to wild, Inner Fire decks appeared again.
I don't think Skulking Geist was only about Jade Druid. All Malygos decks are using 1-cost spells, Power Overwhelming was also a problematic card as a 1-cost card but it moved to HoF before Skulking Geist but it will be a solution to Power Overwhelming too like Conceal, Ice Lance or any other which i can't remember right now.
Like how mana cheating is a problematic mechanic for Hearthstone, Low costed - High Valued cards are also problematic too.
It can be said that almost all 1-cost minions can be problematic one day. Best example is Fire Fly. In the Year of the Mammoth, almost all decks have it. There are other problematic examples too,
Anyway, the subject here is Skulking Geist, I agree that it was created to counter Jade Idol but it was not a hate card. It is a simple tech card. Unlike you, I liked Skulking Geist's concept, I like its combo disruption + game plan disruption ability also a removal remover. I don't think that it ended as an Idol-Hate card.
Note that 'hate cards' isn't an official term. It's simply meaning a tech card designed specifically to destroy a particular deck or strategy rather than simply making the matchup easier.
A perfect example is the comparison of Brawl with Reno for tech against aggro decks. Brawl is a great anti-aggro tool and it helps your matchup against them, but it doesn't completely destroy the opponent as is. It HELPS you win, and if they screw up or if other areas of the game force them into a bad situation, can spell a win, but it itself doesn't win it alone. Reno, though, led to a lot of 50/50 matches (as you literally have a 50% chance of having it in your hand by turn 6 if you mulligan for it) where you flat out lose the game if he drops. If you played burn or fast aggro your only hope was that the card wouldn't show up.
Reno would be an anti-aggro Hate card, by many definitions. I can see people arguing against it, of course, but I hope it gives the idea.
In that same vein, I believe Geist was meant to be a Hate card for Idol that failed to do that and instead changed a LOT of other matchups (which I think was also expected by Blizzard). Whether that was a good card or not... I guess I lean on "it was a fine card, but lets not try it again so casually". I feel the same for the power level of death knights btw.
Regarding the bomb vs singleton discussion, he did bring up a good point. He said that if the Singleton cards came first and we had decks already out for it, then they added in bomb warrior, people would consider it a very interesting counter that they would want to see happen. The issue is that it's the reverse: we got the counter before we got the cards to be countered, and it's the new fancy cards we want to try that's being countered by the already-used.
I will note though that he used the Blizzard-speak of 'we're looking into it'. Note that I can't remember a time that they said that and it DIDN'T result in a nerf. The overall impression I had with the conversation is that they KNOW it's countering, workarounds would be too clunky or really screw up rules and expectations so they'd rather not go there, but they are hoping that the situation doesn't occur too often (i.e. not everyone playing bomb warrior, and in many games the 2nd bomb doesn't show up early and the League cards are early-midgame). If it does, they'll step in, and their current track record is that it'll be a fast solution.
So I'm cool with it. They know it could be an issue. They already looked into it. They understand their stance and know they could be wrong. They are ready to fix it if they are wrong.
I haven't listened yet, I plan to, but my initial thoughts are that it's an interesting situation, and I can understand the stance..... and I really really hope that they've considered that if there are a lot of bomb decks played (seems that there are) then it will make shiny new legendaries (and signature ones at that) feel really really underwhelming and taint the feeling of players for some time.
If the fix winds up having to be a new card printed to remove duplicates:
1) it either has to be a SN1P-SN4P situation (they've done it once ever if I'm not mistaken) or wait months until the next set (impact: the signature legendaries of this set feel horrible until another set, not ideal); and,
2) It will have a pretty massive impact on the opportunity cost to gain the benefit.... Can I see it being run in a (for example) Nomi deck, or Togwaggle style deck to race to your empty deck faster? Can I see it making the average card in the highlander decks much much stronger? Yes to both of the above. Reducing your deck to 15 one-ofs compared to 30 one-ofs makes a deck much shorter, but far higher average quality and then there are various refill options too. Not to mention that you can just include the Reno-esque card and the singleton enabler in any old deck for the option to 'break glass in emergency' if you want the effect, and play a fully effective, normal deck if not.
I can't see them printing a card that removes duplicates. For one that's a rather extreme Hate card for a large number of strategies introduced just to make 4 cards work a bit better. For another, it makes the matchup a lot more RNG based: do I get my 'save me' card in time? no, I lose. yes? I probably win. That's the design mentality that made the original Reno which they worked to avoid in the current version. In the end adding hate tech really doesn't fix this type of problem. Tech is better suited for anti-archetype (that is 'anti-aggro, anti-control') or for tweaking a slightly bad but winnable situation to your favor.
I'm guessing if they have to step in, they'll either nerf bomb warrior so that people use it less or change a rule to make singleton decks work with bombs in it. I can imagine it going "if your deck started with no duplicates..." or the like. Which is still a bit meh of an option.
It's a very good conversation. Definitely everyone listen to it. Dean had a habit of taking a question and quickly going into a long tangent about a developer topic that.. might've been probably isn't related to the question but was very interesting, and the Omnistone folks quickly realized it's best just to let him go on and just throw a new question just to get him going again.
A bit of note that he liked how death knights were very socially polarizing: as in some people REALLY liked it and some REALLY didn't like it. He also considers defile one of his favorites, as it's a card that's easy to understand but allows for complex situations.
Regarding the bomb vs singleton discussion, he did bring up a good point. He said that if the Singleton cards came first and we had decks already out for it, then they added in bomb warrior, people would consider it a very interesting counter that they would want to see happen. The issue is that it's the reverse: we got the counter before we got the cards to be countered, and it's the new fancy cards we want to try that's being countered by the already-used.
I will note though that he used the Blizzard-speak of 'we're looking into it'. Note that I can't remember a time that they said that and it DIDN'T result in a nerf. The overall impression I had with the conversation is that they KNOW it's countering, workarounds would be too clunky or really screw up rules and expectations so they'd rather not go there, but they are hoping that the situation doesn't occur too often (i.e. not everyone playing bomb warrior, and in many games the 2nd bomb doesn't show up early and the League cards are early-midgame). If it does, they'll step in, and their current track record is that it'll be a fast solution.
So I'm cool with it. They know it could be an issue. They already looked into it. They understand their stance and know they could be wrong. They are ready to fix it if they are wrong.
Just imagine if every gaming company had THAT last line of sentences as a main philosophy.
Also yes, so happy now that it's Krush. Also Omni's discussion made me realize Reno might also work out as well if you consider it a Tempo advanaged board clear rather than a game ender. The question just comes to whether we can make a good deck out of singletons. I'm guessing mage can if they can sort a good win condition from it. I know hunter can AND has ways to draw bombs from its deck.
It is scheduled for 12-1pm pdt. Hearthpwn for whatever reason is counting down to 1pm which doesn't make much sense. I don't think it is a stream either so unsure exactly when we will get the images.
I think I can get it. 12pm is when the stream begins but the actual card reveal won't happen then, so they are probably aiming for when they will update: post stream.
It also prevents the occasional "It's 12:01, AND THERE"S NOTHING THERE! HOW DARE YOU DIEIDIEIDIEIEIDIEDIDEIDEIEDIDIEIDE"
Do you guys just play in the lower ranks then? Of the few legendarys (and epics) you must have as a F2P player what decks can you create?
F2Pers once they are established (can spend most of the time saving, have a strong Classic collection, so on) get around 3-4 random legendaries in packs, 1 additional legendary via Blizzard, then enough dust for another 2-4 more depending on how many epics they need. That's EVERY set.
A typical good deck uses, at most, 2 legendaries from one set. Even if they require a lot of legendaries, they get spread out among the 4-7 sets we have and many tend to overlap. You don't exactly need to keep remaking Zilliax for every deck that requires it.
Thus if you manage your dust correctly, haven't been mass dusting early in life, and don't blindly craft cards based on hype, you can easily craft a good few top tier decks every set. Note that you typically only really need ONE deck to go up ladder.
I've spent $10 in the game since open beta, and all of those purchases were optional. The literal ONLY reason I *EVER* can't create a deck is because I didn't want to make it. I typically make tier 2-3 decks I find interesting, sometimes homemade, sometimes grabbed from a tournament or the forums. I'm not AGAINST making top tier decks but most of them are 'solved' so I don't find them too interesting. I'm sitting on over 5k dust, still haven't dusted my most recent set of gold cards, I have some legendaries and epics I can dust if I need more and pretty much my entire collection of Wild cards, most of which are useless even if I go to play Wild. Note that I also aren't that great in arena, NEVER get more than 10-20 gold off of hte 3-win quest, and don't play enough to reach rank 5 so there's a LOT of gold and dust I'm NOT getting that other more dedicated players can get.
The F2P problem in hearthstone is in GETTING to this point, as the first few months are a NIGHTMARE, especially when there's no cheap deck to climb, and you have to split your gold between new cards and classic. You typically get established once Classic fills out and the sets you don't have rotate out.
But as far as any paywalls for getting to the higher ranks: those don't exist here. You DO have a paywall for experimenting (those first two weeks when everyone is playing with new cards and making bad decks? You are stuck with Arena or random Wonderful decks) and you can't make every deck that shows up. Otherwise, you get the choice of playing to win or playing to have fun, and can't really do both (unless winning = fun to you)
This is why you should've stuck with Nintendo. You have nightmares about running out of time. The worst nightmare I have on the NES was my parents finding out I held on to my rental copy of Final Fantasy for 2 weeks, costing them the price of the actual game.
(*whack* Dak you had a Sega as well and you also remember that drowning music. Need to click the link to rememem..)
ABOUT THE ACTUAL TOPIC!
Usually these 'timing' things are set up so that they KNOW the community will complete the whole thing in time. I've only seen a community miss a deadline in the MMO Trickster
I miss that game and I miss my sheep but OMFG those drilling challenges!
In any case, no worries about the timer. Though I can get if it triggers you about that tim
I've been hearing some people having issues, so there's definately something going on. I could get in touch with Blizzard officially as well as check out reddit.
As for myself, LG Aristo 2 Android 8.1 Havn't had any issues at any point and I only play on my phone.
all games that include pets are just trying to get extra money, and even if blizzard gives them out for free, it still has the same vibe. I really hate the pets in Magic:Arena for the same reason
no pets in any game have ever been cool looking, or cute, they just sit there and make annoying sounds.
So what alternatives should they offer? Note that this is a F2P game and, as such, they do need to add in more ways 'to get money'. They seem to be wanting for things that they can charge that we'd accept. So, what would that be as they already do hero portraits and card backs?
There's not really many things that you can do to monetize a card game cosmetically I think. Maybe alternative boards?
I've only made 3 purchases in my lifetime here: $2 during beta for a gold card and both of the 10-pack-plus-legendary packs. Even when I've had the cash I've had no real reason to actually buy anything.
If they made it a full on pet, with animations and interactions you can do with it including petting it, guiding it around..maybe even have it react to certain things, like cringe when you get hit or randomly hiss and swat at an opponent's card (entirely local and doesn't DO anything, just a visual thing).
I'D #()$# BUY IT! $10 minimum if it looks good. $20 if it's so involved I literally lose games due to interacting with the thing (woops, missed my turn because I was feeding my dragon).
A very good post here. However, I'm not sure it convinced me.
Charge is a very dangerous mechanic to involve in the game. That was the core issue behind Warsong Commander
The first point is correct in that there's nothing stopping them from doing this change as other cards have been changed in the same way. Thus the question isn't 'can' but 'should'.
As far as the second point, I'm not quite so willing to state that there's enough solutions for old Patron. Many of those choices you stated either had already proven not good enough (mal'ganis.. seriously?) or are far too weak to even stand to any meta (no one is going to play Soggoth for any reason). You can't just say "there's taunt, so it'll be fine." It has to be in a strong deck, and it has to be in a deck that can stabnd up to the rest of the meta as well. Making a deck that can ONLY beat Patron and nothing else isn't going to be viable enough of an answer.
I'm not a Wild player, so I have to ask here, of all of those decks you bring up, including Control Paladin, Quest Mage, and Handlock, which are actually doing well in the meta right now? THOSE are the ones that will have to fight Patron Warrior after all. Handlock beating Patron won't mean much if Handlock can't survive, say, Big Priest.
Lastly, the last sidepoint, the issue of Wild having little interaction is a point against Patron. If decks that offer very little interaction is a problem in Wild, adding another deck that is VERY uninteractive, like Patron, is adding a problem to a problem.
Note that Blizzard has said that they are looking into addressing Big priest which suggests that such decks are NOT acceptable in the long-term in Wild. Which, again, puts Patron in question.
On the third point... what ARE you getting at here?
You talk about the usability of cards in the basic and classic set. However, are you aware that the current team is actively TRYING to make the sets less used? The entire point to the HoF is to make the sets less playable so that the meta becomes less stagnant. We don't HoF bad cards. We HoF good ones. Thus the usability of Warsong isn't an issue as it's already underplayed. If we move it, we won't replace it with something more usable. Thus Warsong isn't harming the new player experience in a way that Blizzard isn't intending since it being a bad card doesn't make it any worse than, say, Radiance.
Also note that Yong Woo's philosophy no longer applies here. The current Hearthstone team has been pretty aggressive with ditching many of the old ideas from the old team, meaning they are not holding themselves to anything that was said by people like Woo or Brode. Wild has unnerfed cards, but also kept cards in their nerfed state (combo druid is still not an option).
On the fourth point while it is truth that design limiters isn't an issue, decks that limit the meta ARE issues. It's why they nerfed Raza priest after all. Meanwhile I don't think you established your first point enough to leave it an assumption that there's enough counters for Patron Warrior. You also aren't considering possible interactions due to the new cards. For example, the key cards in Patron are all odd, making them viable as a Baku deck. Warrior also has a lot more ways to self-damage their cards, making it easier to make a patron board, and ways to put cards back in their deck, which is something they didn't have in the past.
So not only are we not sure that the current decks are strong enough against Old Patron, but we won't be facing the old deck, but a NEW deck using 4 years of cards build under the assumption that Warsong doesn't exist.
That's not even GETTING at the unknown factor and the grand reason why Warsong, and not Patron, was nerfed. The issue wasn't just Patron being Patron but that Warsong would interact with ANYTHING 3 attack or less. Thus nerfing just Ptaron still left a potential nightmare ready to blow later on.
So have you looked at the 4 years of cards made afterwards that would LOVE to have charge? What decks will be made that are NOT Patron but be much worse.
On the fifth point... this was talked about by Frodan in a tournament at one point but it sort of hit me in an interesting way.
Patron wasn't as skill-intensive as we remember it being.
In 2015, the deck was literally playing 3d chess compared to the aggro-loving meta then, and there are some high end choices to be made. But compared to the decks pros play now and the meta....not so much. The #1 biggest factor that caused people to lose in the past was the mathmatics of the final swing:having to figure out whether you have lethal while giving yourself enough time to start the combo. It was the first deck to ever have that issue. We've had A LOT of decks that have demanded such things since then, many of which demand it just for board clears.
Decks have long since moved away from 'do me face' of those days. They are A LOT more difficult to manage, not only including the raw math calculations of Patron, but also the ability to adapt to unknown cards, the need to decide whether to go offensive, defensive, or value oriented. Compared to the current crop of decks, Patron is MUCH easier to manage, but MUCH more devastating as Patron's big calculation is "do you die now."
Patron was the start of complicated, deeper thinking decks in hearthstone. But we've moved on to much better worlds since then.
The final point is really the first point addressed again: that the deck isn't as powerful as what we have now, except you are using Jace to show an example of it happening.
But again we don't know. And that WOULD be fine except that Blizzard still hasn't shown enough speed of making changes to Wild in case this isn't a Jace situation. We've seen one card change utterly gut the Wild meta. This can easily be as much a Sea Witch or a Jace. Is Blizzard willing to fix things if it turns into the former? Is reviving Patron really that needed when it's FAR from the only deck of our past that we can't return to. I can't play Raza Priest. I can't play Miracle Rogue like I used to. I can't play Undertaker Hunter. I can't play Beta Murloc Warlock or 2014 Midrange Hunter.
The concept of preserving history using Wild is already a ship that sailed. Bringing back Patron alone for that reason is arbitrary and extremely risky. If Blizzard is willing to try to bring as many of the old decks back into Wild or some other format, with the williness to rapid release changes if things turn south then I'm for it.
As we stand now, with how they are acting now, I'm not convinced that Patron can't sit in the same afterlife that Combo Druid and Yogg Druid currently sit.
This is false. If you evolve/devolve a minion into a mana cost that doesn't exist, nothing happens. You won't get a full health Sea Giant, your giant will remain damaged. Trust me, I've tried early on in the season, not realising that Snowfury Giant had rotated out.
That's why this would be a significant change to the decks I mentioned, all of which typically do run giants and lackeys.
Didn't realize that and edited the post accordingly. Still though the rest of the overall argument is still valid and the question isn't whether people will complain about a new feature of a deck (they will) but whether that addition for those decks is worse than what mages do now.
Upping a few T2-3 decks slightly with a stable upgrade to slightly diminish an RNG based advantage to a tier 1 deck seems like a nice trade compared to, say, completely removing mountain giants from standard or gutting the mage deck entirely.
Again whether we need to do something is up for debate, but if we do, I'm not seeing a better alternative.
Well think of past expansions, have you crafted cards that, say, a few weeks later you stopped using? Or decks that you thought were good and found out just didn't work out? Or decks you thought were fun and bored you after a while? I know in my case that's where a TON of my dust went off to. I would see a deck I want to craft, dust bunch of things to make it, then in a week stop using it. Then later I would need to craft the cards I dusted before. Meanwhile I STILL regret crafting Shudderwock right after the Witchwood expansion. That's 1600 dust I could've used to make the murloc warleaders that's keeping me from any decent murloc deck, for example.
If you aren't a Whale, the #1 most important resource is your dust. That, far more than gold, will determine whether you feel you 'have enough' in an expansion. I don't care if you want to solo one class or play every class, whether you play for fun or for competition, whether you suck or are good, crafting the right cards will give you the decks you need for the entire set while crafting the wrong ones will make that gold and cash seem worthless.
Don't think about how much of your collection you have or what legendaries you open. Open your packs, then think and research very VERY hard on what decks you actually REALLY want to be playing for the next 4 months. Go watch streamers, or tournaments, or use the deckbuilder, or whatever, but LOOK at those decks and think "I'm going to be running this for 4 months. Am I SURE this will do for me?" If you go this route I would say, pick about 5-7 of them perhaps.
Once you say YES to those decks, then look at your collection, see which of those decks will require the least amount of dust to craft. Then see how many you can make with the dust you have. Note that this is BEFORE dusting golden cards or duplicates, nevermind your bad cards, NEVERMIND any other dusting. JUST the dust on hand. Craft THOSE decks. Then play them.
After that, if you want to craft a new deck, start with the cheapest to replicate, and start with dusting and ONLY dust just enough to make THAT ONE deck. Myself I rarely hit the 'dust dupe' button: I manually kill enough duplicates to make THAT deck. Once I'm out of those, I dust the goldens, then the bad wild cards, then the bad standards, then so on. But usually long before then I am too busy playing the decks I already made to do anything else. Right now I'm OBSESSED with Muck Shaman, so once I made that I haven't had a reason to make anything else. Even if a quest demands a different class I just use the autocomplete to make 'the best deck' to get wins off of, or else use Brawl.
The idea is to limit the dusting to just what you need to be content. Make a few decks, play it, just make enough decks till you are happy with your decks, then stop. And make it just 'annoying' to dust to make you think. I've had a few decks that I wanted to craft then, when going to collectio nto hunt for goldens I went "do I REALLY want this deck?" and realized, not REALLLLLYY, so I didn't.
If that big mess of text helps then it might make these next few sets easier to handle for your budget and collection.
TL:DR SUMMARY
1. Dust is PRECIOUS. For anyone not a whale, this will make or break your enjoyment of a set. Treat it like happiness-wrapped Gold.
2. Be aware of past times when dust was misused: decks you crafted then stopped playing soon after. cards you later stopped using. ext. That's wasted dust that could've been used elsewhere.
3. Be systematic in a new set: Know WHAT exactly you want. Know the decks that WILL get them to you. You don't need ever deck in an expansion, just the RIGHT ones that you will be able to play for 4 MONTHS without giving up on them.
4. Start with the deck that requires the least amount of dust. Then make those, play those. Then slowly add more expensive ones until you're 'happy' with the decks you have. Then STOP.
5. Don't make dusting easy. Don't pre-dust. Dust only as needed. That INCLUDES that blasted 'dust duplicates' button. If you need to dust, rethink "do I REALLY want this deck?" Make SURE you do.
6. Hope this helps.
Firstly, as far as 'custom games' 'asking for trouble' even if it's between friends: as a person who supports the concept of a 'custom' mode between clans/guilds (note I also support us having clans/guilds) I am deeply curious as to what makes such a concept a bad one.
If it's something that's unfeasable or impossible coding wise, that's a developer issue and something that should be determined and voiced by Blizzard. Our job here is to figure out whether it's something that we would want to happen IF it's feasable to develop. Unless you have some insight to how it is on the developer side.
I mean you might, which is why I'm asking.
Point is, what do you mean by it's 'asking for trouble' and it 'simply can't happen'?
Secondly as far as 'brawl block' I believe the Brawls help demonstrate the problem with it. We have weekly brawls that make different rules in how we play, sometime in ways you cannot recreate naturally, such as removing the RNG from the card draw or limiting a deck to just 4 cards, or just crazy stuff in general. We generally get bored of it by the end of the week with the meta 'solved' long before then. A month of any of them would be either ignored or raged at.
I'm hoping that the set blocks they've done have shown better numbers. I enjoyed them and so much want a mode of that, but I'm sure Blizzard is keeping a heavy record of how the playerbase is truly handling these events. Thing is, if it IS proven to be good enough for a full mode, we won't know about it for at least a few months if not a full year while they develop it (Tournament mode SHOULD've taught them not to talk about anything that isn't ready). If it's proven to be something we think we want but don't, we won't know until a year or two later when they answer an AMA question and say "we looked into it and found it diddn't really work out.
In any case, at least as far as the set blocks is concerned, we'll get it if we REALLY showed we want it.
There are two other options:
1. Invest in decks you find fun that aren't that competitive. Of those this means that you don't have a meta deck. It's basically the fliped coin of the #1 option and still translates to not being able to taste everything.
2. The hedge. The key to remember that to compete you really only need at most 2 decks. For example, anyone who has crafted a Conjure's Calling Mage is pretty much done as far as reaching Legend.
Thus a F2P player CAN just craft said deck then just spend the rest of the dust on crafting whatever they find interesting. A F2Per woh enjoys Muck Shaman, Conjure's Mage, Bomb Warrior, and Mech Hunter can craft all four decks effectively*. At that point you not only have THREE meta relevant decks but a third tier meme deck on top of it. If you dislike Bomb or Hunter you have room for another meme deck like res priest or Tess Rogue.
(I have Much and Hunter, I'm one legendary away from Bomb and I have enough dust that I can literally dust every single mage card in the Conjure's mage deck I already own, spend it making a Murloc Druid and handcraft every single card, including legendaries to fully form it and not miss a beat on preparing for the next set. Note that I literally only play an average of 3 games a day, average 3 wins in arena, and havn't hit above rank 10 in about 2 years. I'm the poster child for casual. Point is, making those four decks is NOT a hard thing for an established F2P player)
The PROBLEM is that you can probably make about 3-4 decks per set that require a hefty investment (as in, at least one legendary's worth of cards) so you have to make SURE you hit paydirt. Make a bomb Warrior and find you hate it.. such a shame. Made Pogo Rogue because you swore it was going to be The #$)#(.. ikk.
So what you sacrifice is basically that first month of a new set. You sit playing Wonderful decks and spamming arena to gather dust/packs. You ignore the hype and experimental phase. You wait until Tournaments and pro players perfect their meta decks and folks like Kibler sort out the fun meme decks from the boring ones.
So it's a way to both play competitively AND play fun decks, but you don't get to experiment and try and fail. You CAN'T fail.
So you can Play compeititively, Play memeish, Wait a long time then netdeck for both, or go single class. That's the price of going free.
Which i don't mind. F2P should NOT be the same as paid. Otherwise it might as well just be a Free Game. The point isn't whether paying means more fun: it should be. The point is whether F2P is enough fun. If I were to eliminate all of the paid content does it feel like a full game you can enjoy? If so then that's fine.
As far as Hearthstone, I don't know whether it's easier or harder than the distant past as I didn't get established till around Old Gods. I DO know that once established the game became much easier to keep up with and one of the better games I've played in this mode. Getting TO established though was NOT an easy feat and was getting harder and harder up to Old Gods. I have no clue how anyone could survive the Old Gods meta if they literally started playing at that point. By how it sounds it's somewhat easier now but still can go a long way to making it easier for new players to get into the game.
Bringing back old cards is VERY messy. All it take is one Spreading Plague or a [Hearthstone Card (Firelance Portal) Not Found] to completely gut the balance of a meta, especially since the old sets are meant to be balanced between each other and NOT with future sets. Besides, Standard is meant to be for pulling NEW cards, not the old ones. If I honestly wanted to play with the old sets I would go to Wild.
Myself I very much prefer the method used last set: buff cards from last year's set. It provides more of what you are looking at, is easier to manage since the basic design of the cards are already meant to exist in standard, and if they DO change the meta it's for a very short time (in case anyone didn't notice: Sn1p Sn4p is technically a Boomsday card, so he's gone next year).
If they bring a way to mix old and new cards, it should be entire sets. I'm ALLLL for a new format similar to the brawls where different sets are combined.
Honestly, the last set did a great job of solving the old problems of staleness. By the time we finally establishd a stable meta we were a week into the card release period of Uldun. That was caused by a new set, a nerfing a month in and a buffing the following month. That along with combining the delayed eleaes of the single player and good brawls on top of it and...well.. just moar of that. They can literally lock down the dates, make it a normal thing.
It's a rough thing. We've had a number of eras where many of the content providers stuck to the game because any other game wouldn't produce nearly as many views. They are all now very happy with the game nowadays.
There's also the consideration that content providers aren't 'playing a hobby'. They are doing a job. There's a line between hobby and job when you realize that you aren't doing something just for yourself but for someone else. That's when you realize you can't just change or keep something because you prefer it.
But that's about the content provider. Whether they stay in hearthstone when they don't enjoy it is based on how much of what they do is a hobby and how much is it a job. And them staying for the sake of work is...well.. just like staying in any job when things turn meh.
As far as hearthstone's health...it depends.
If the person has been playing for a long time and simply wants to move on then that's just life. So long as new people step in to take their place then the game simply grows to the next generation. If they dislike the game due to negative aspects though, it's a bad sign for the game, though far from unrecoverable.
Note that whether they DO leave is almost not an issue. A person who is 'done' but stays while burnt out and a person who leaves instead does about the same damage overall. Stagnating providers eventually lose their drive, which eventually turns off the public wihle making the game feel just as stale. People that leave, meanwhile, bring woe and doomsayers. Stay or go, te public knows you no longer want to play and will react accordingly.
So point is, it doesn't really matter if they stay or go. Once they are burnt out, their reasons for feeling so are enough to affect the game, whether it's just a sign of the game moving to a new group or a sign of the game getting worse. From there, actually staying or going only really affects the content provider.
Illidan used to be VERY powerful
Battlecry: Both players discard 3 cards and draw 3 cards. [7 mana, 7 attack, 7 health, Legendary][
Same stats as boom, but VERY disruptive to combo decks with the right timing. Best guess I have to the reason for the change was due to an earlier philosophy of not wanting cards that 'ruin' other people's fun. The new card is less powerful because..well.. have you SEEN most legendaries back then? Blizzard wasn't that great in high mana legendary cards back then. He's kept as is now because of a new philosophy of not wanting Classic to be the Go To set for most deck design. if we see him in an expansion, he'll probably get a MUCH better design.
Dr. Boom being better was a surprise to everyone. We all mocked him when he was revealed, and I'm betting he was meant to be a meme. However, he was literally the only 7 drop that wasn't absolute garbage ONLY because he actually DID something to the board. Part of why Dr. Boom shows up so often now is because of how absolutely silly that an uncared for thing in WoW turned into such a big name in here. And it shows in his designs as someone who gets no respect and, by all impressions, should be worthless but actually ends up being the most effective.
(seriously, the entire POINT to Shadows, and the main conflict of Uldun starts with us literally stealing an entire city by strapping rockets on it)
So basically, (TL:DR SUMMARY)
Illidan was good but didn't fit the old card design, so he got remade.
He was remade bad because we used to suck at card design.
He's going to remain bad because new set design won't let him be good again.
That Dr. Boom isn't worthless while he is shows just HOW bad we sucked at card design in 2014-15.
And Illidan seriously needs to be a prominent figure in a set sometime.
Well, it was more of the theme that did it. That expansion wasn't just some random hearthstone made event.
This is the Frozen Throne. Lich King. Death Knight! The topic is literally the most important event in all that is Warcraft Lore.
People have been clamoring for this set since Hearthstone was first made. It's going to go *BIG*. Note that they work on sets about 2-4 sets in advance. Thus KotFT started development somewhere between Old Gods and One Night: BEFORE the game filled up with Jades and Pirates.
This is correct.
In some cases, they know the character they want to add, but have to figure out what sort of effect it will do or how it will look. The Death Knights are a good recent example: they knew they wanted all of the classes to be 'death knights' early on but had no clue how that would actually play out. They were literally weeks from finishing the set before they even figured the answer out.
In other cases, they know of a great mechanic or card they want to add, then have to decide what sort of character will that fit that card. Reborn, IIRC, has been in mind for a while now without even a set to put it in, nevermind artwork or the character.
Sometimes, the whole card basically plops in their face and it just needs tweaks. The second they knew Old Gods was going to be the thing C'thun's design basically flew together including how it needs to grow over time and 'loom' over the game and how it should be devastating but not QUITE game ending. The design was more about tweaking than figuring anything out.
So yeah, there's no direct sequence. Each card comes to life in different ways.
Note that 'hate cards' isn't an official term. It's simply meaning a tech card designed specifically to destroy a particular deck or strategy rather than simply making the matchup easier.
A perfect example is the comparison of Brawl with Reno for tech against aggro decks. Brawl is a great anti-aggro tool and it helps your matchup against them, but it doesn't completely destroy the opponent as is. It HELPS you win, and if they screw up or if other areas of the game force them into a bad situation, can spell a win, but it itself doesn't win it alone. Reno, though, led to a lot of 50/50 matches (as you literally have a 50% chance of having it in your hand by turn 6 if you mulligan for it) where you flat out lose the game if he drops. If you played burn or fast aggro your only hope was that the card wouldn't show up.
Reno would be an anti-aggro Hate card, by many definitions. I can see people arguing against it, of course, but I hope it gives the idea.
In that same vein, I believe Geist was meant to be a Hate card for Idol that failed to do that and instead changed a LOT of other matchups (which I think was also expected by Blizzard). Whether that was a good card or not... I guess I lean on "it was a fine card, but lets not try it again so casually". I feel the same for the power level of death knights btw.
I can't see them printing a card that removes duplicates. For one that's a rather extreme Hate card for a large number of strategies introduced just to make 4 cards work a bit better. For another, it makes the matchup a lot more RNG based: do I get my 'save me' card in time? no, I lose. yes? I probably win. That's the design mentality that made the original Reno which they worked to avoid in the current version. In the end adding hate tech really doesn't fix this type of problem. Tech is better suited for anti-archetype (that is 'anti-aggro, anti-control') or for tweaking a slightly bad but winnable situation to your favor.
I'm guessing if they have to step in, they'll either nerf bomb warrior so that people use it less or change a rule to make singleton decks work with bombs in it. I can imagine it going "if your deck started with no duplicates..." or the like. Which is still a bit meh of an option.
It's a very good conversation. Definitely everyone listen to it. Dean had a habit of taking a question and quickly going into a long tangent about a developer topic that.. might've been probably isn't related to the question but was very interesting, and the Omnistone folks quickly realized it's best just to let him go on and just throw a new question just to get him going again.
A bit of note that he liked how death knights were very socially polarizing: as in some people REALLY liked it and some REALLY didn't like it. He also considers defile one of his favorites, as it's a card that's easy to understand but allows for complex situations.
Regarding the bomb vs singleton discussion, he did bring up a good point. He said that if the Singleton cards came first and we had decks already out for it, then they added in bomb warrior, people would consider it a very interesting counter that they would want to see happen. The issue is that it's the reverse: we got the counter before we got the cards to be countered, and it's the new fancy cards we want to try that's being countered by the already-used.
I will note though that he used the Blizzard-speak of 'we're looking into it'. Note that I can't remember a time that they said that and it DIDN'T result in a nerf. The overall impression I had with the conversation is that they KNOW it's countering, workarounds would be too clunky or really screw up rules and expectations so they'd rather not go there, but they are hoping that the situation doesn't occur too often (i.e. not everyone playing bomb warrior, and in many games the 2nd bomb doesn't show up early and the League cards are early-midgame). If it does, they'll step in, and their current track record is that it'll be a fast solution.
So I'm cool with it. They know it could be an issue. They already looked into it. They understand their stance and know they could be wrong. They are ready to fix it if they are wrong.
Just imagine if every gaming company had THAT last line of sentences as a main philosophy.
Also yes, so happy now that it's Krush. Also Omni's discussion made me realize Reno might also work out as well if you consider it a Tempo advanaged board clear rather than a game ender. The question just comes to whether we can make a good deck out of singletons. I'm guessing mage can if they can sort a good win condition from it. I know hunter can AND has ways to draw bombs from its deck.
I think I can get it. 12pm is when the stream begins but the actual card reveal won't happen then, so they are probably aiming for when they will update: post stream.
It also prevents the occasional "It's 12:01, AND THERE"S NOTHING THERE! HOW DARE YOU DIEIDIEIDIEIEIDIEDIDEIDEIEDIDIEIDE"
close to 4k at the moment. Hoping to hit close to 6k by the expansion, then using the following month after release to finish buying the set.
Dust I believe is around 5k.
F2Pers once they are established (can spend most of the time saving, have a strong Classic collection, so on) get around 3-4 random legendaries in packs, 1 additional legendary via Blizzard, then enough dust for another 2-4 more depending on how many epics they need. That's EVERY set.
A typical good deck uses, at most, 2 legendaries from one set. Even if they require a lot of legendaries, they get spread out among the 4-7 sets we have and many tend to overlap. You don't exactly need to keep remaking Zilliax for every deck that requires it.
Thus if you manage your dust correctly, haven't been mass dusting early in life, and don't blindly craft cards based on hype, you can easily craft a good few top tier decks every set. Note that you typically only really need ONE deck to go up ladder.
I've spent $10 in the game since open beta, and all of those purchases were optional. The literal ONLY reason I *EVER* can't create a deck is because I didn't want to make it. I typically make tier 2-3 decks I find interesting, sometimes homemade, sometimes grabbed from a tournament or the forums. I'm not AGAINST making top tier decks but most of them are 'solved' so I don't find them too interesting. I'm sitting on over 5k dust, still haven't dusted my most recent set of gold cards, I have some legendaries and epics I can dust if I need more and pretty much my entire collection of Wild cards, most of which are useless even if I go to play Wild. Note that I also aren't that great in arena, NEVER get more than 10-20 gold off of hte 3-win quest, and don't play enough to reach rank 5 so there's a LOT of gold and dust I'm NOT getting that other more dedicated players can get.
The F2P problem in hearthstone is in GETTING to this point, as the first few months are a NIGHTMARE, especially when there's no cheap deck to climb, and you have to split your gold between new cards and classic. You typically get established once Classic fills out and the sets you don't have rotate out.
But as far as any paywalls for getting to the higher ranks: those don't exist here. You DO have a paywall for experimenting (those first two weeks when everyone is playing with new cards and making bad decks? You are stuck with Arena or random Wonderful decks) and you can't make every deck that shows up. Otherwise, you get the choice of playing to win or playing to have fun, and can't really do both (unless winning = fun to you)
This is why you should've stuck with Nintendo. You have nightmares about running out of time. The worst nightmare I have on the NES was my parents finding out I held on to my rental copy of Final Fantasy for 2 weeks, costing them the price of the actual game.
(*whack* Dak you had a Sega as well and you also remember that drowning music. Need to click the link to rememem..)
ABOUT THE ACTUAL TOPIC!
Usually these 'timing' things are set up so that they KNOW the community will complete the whole thing in time. I've only seen a community miss a deadline in the MMO Trickster
I miss that game and I miss my sheep but OMFG those drilling challenges!
In any case, no worries about the timer. Though I can get if it triggers you about that tim
*twitch* TOPIC END!
I've been hearing some people having issues, so there's definately something going on. I could get in touch with Blizzard officially as well as check out reddit.
As for myself, LG Aristo 2 Android 8.1 Havn't had any issues at any point and I only play on my phone.
So what alternatives should they offer? Note that this is a F2P game and, as such, they do need to add in more ways 'to get money'. They seem to be wanting for things that they can charge that we'd accept. So, what would that be as they already do hero portraits and card backs?
There's not really many things that you can do to monetize a card game cosmetically I think. Maybe alternative boards?
I've only made 3 purchases in my lifetime here: $2 during beta for a gold card and both of the 10-pack-plus-legendary packs. Even when I've had the cash I've had no real reason to actually buy anything.
If they made it a full on pet, with animations and interactions you can do with it including petting it, guiding it around..maybe even have it react to certain things, like cringe when you get hit or randomly hiss and swat at an opponent's card (entirely local and doesn't DO anything, just a visual thing).
I'D #()$# BUY IT! $10 minimum if it looks good. $20 if it's so involved I literally lose games due to interacting with the thing (woops, missed my turn because I was feeding my dragon).
Dead serious here. I'm one of those folks who had, and currently MISS, that old program where it was just a cat chasing after your mouse on your screen
A very good post here. However, I'm not sure it convinced me.
Charge is a very dangerous mechanic to involve in the game. That was the core issue behind Warsong Commander
The first point is correct in that there's nothing stopping them from doing this change as other cards have been changed in the same way. Thus the question isn't 'can' but 'should'.
As far as the second point, I'm not quite so willing to state that there's enough solutions for old Patron. Many of those choices you stated either had already proven not good enough (mal'ganis.. seriously?) or are far too weak to even stand to any meta (no one is going to play Soggoth for any reason). You can't just say "there's taunt, so it'll be fine." It has to be in a strong deck, and it has to be in a deck that can stabnd up to the rest of the meta as well. Making a deck that can ONLY beat Patron and nothing else isn't going to be viable enough of an answer.
I'm not a Wild player, so I have to ask here, of all of those decks you bring up, including Control Paladin, Quest Mage, and Handlock, which are actually doing well in the meta right now? THOSE are the ones that will have to fight Patron Warrior after all. Handlock beating Patron won't mean much if Handlock can't survive, say, Big Priest.
Lastly, the last sidepoint, the issue of Wild having little interaction is a point against Patron. If decks that offer very little interaction is a problem in Wild, adding another deck that is VERY uninteractive, like Patron, is adding a problem to a problem.
Note that Blizzard has said that they are looking into addressing Big priest which suggests that such decks are NOT acceptable in the long-term in Wild. Which, again, puts Patron in question.
On the third point... what ARE you getting at here?
You talk about the usability of cards in the basic and classic set. However, are you aware that the current team is actively TRYING to make the sets less used? The entire point to the HoF is to make the sets less playable so that the meta becomes less stagnant. We don't HoF bad cards. We HoF good ones. Thus the usability of Warsong isn't an issue as it's already underplayed. If we move it, we won't replace it with something more usable. Thus Warsong isn't harming the new player experience in a way that Blizzard isn't intending since it being a bad card doesn't make it any worse than, say, Radiance.
Also note that Yong Woo's philosophy no longer applies here. The current Hearthstone team has been pretty aggressive with ditching many of the old ideas from the old team, meaning they are not holding themselves to anything that was said by people like Woo or Brode. Wild has unnerfed cards, but also kept cards in their nerfed state (combo druid is still not an option).
On the fourth point while it is truth that design limiters isn't an issue, decks that limit the meta ARE issues. It's why they nerfed Raza priest after all. Meanwhile I don't think you established your first point enough to leave it an assumption that there's enough counters for Patron Warrior. You also aren't considering possible interactions due to the new cards. For example, the key cards in Patron are all odd, making them viable as a Baku deck. Warrior also has a lot more ways to self-damage their cards, making it easier to make a patron board, and ways to put cards back in their deck, which is something they didn't have in the past.
So not only are we not sure that the current decks are strong enough against Old Patron, but we won't be facing the old deck, but a NEW deck using 4 years of cards build under the assumption that Warsong doesn't exist.
That's not even GETTING at the unknown factor and the grand reason why Warsong, and not Patron, was nerfed. The issue wasn't just Patron being Patron but that Warsong would interact with ANYTHING 3 attack or less. Thus nerfing just Ptaron still left a potential nightmare ready to blow later on.
So have you looked at the 4 years of cards made afterwards that would LOVE to have charge? What decks will be made that are NOT Patron but be much worse.
On the fifth point... this was talked about by Frodan in a tournament at one point but it sort of hit me in an interesting way.
Patron wasn't as skill-intensive as we remember it being.
In 2015, the deck was literally playing 3d chess compared to the aggro-loving meta then, and there are some high end choices to be made. But compared to the decks pros play now and the meta....not so much. The #1 biggest factor that caused people to lose in the past was the mathmatics of the final swing:having to figure out whether you have lethal while giving yourself enough time to start the combo. It was the first deck to ever have that issue. We've had A LOT of decks that have demanded such things since then, many of which demand it just for board clears.
Decks have long since moved away from 'do me face' of those days. They are A LOT more difficult to manage, not only including the raw math calculations of Patron, but also the ability to adapt to unknown cards, the need to decide whether to go offensive, defensive, or value oriented. Compared to the current crop of decks, Patron is MUCH easier to manage, but MUCH more devastating as Patron's big calculation is "do you die now."
Patron was the start of complicated, deeper thinking decks in hearthstone. But we've moved on to much better worlds since then.
The final point is really the first point addressed again: that the deck isn't as powerful as what we have now, except you are using Jace to show an example of it happening.
But again we don't know. And that WOULD be fine except that Blizzard still hasn't shown enough speed of making changes to Wild in case this isn't a Jace situation. We've seen one card change utterly gut the Wild meta. This can easily be as much a Sea Witch or a Jace. Is Blizzard willing to fix things if it turns into the former? Is reviving Patron really that needed when it's FAR from the only deck of our past that we can't return to. I can't play Raza Priest. I can't play Miracle Rogue like I used to. I can't play Undertaker Hunter. I can't play Beta Murloc Warlock or 2014 Midrange Hunter.
The concept of preserving history using Wild is already a ship that sailed. Bringing back Patron alone for that reason is arbitrary and extremely risky. If Blizzard is willing to try to bring as many of the old decks back into Wild or some other format, with the williness to rapid release changes if things turn south then I'm for it.
As we stand now, with how they are acting now, I'm not convinced that Patron can't sit in the same afterlife that Combo Druid and Yogg Druid currently sit.
Didn't realize that and edited the post accordingly. Still though the rest of the overall argument is still valid and the question isn't whether people will complain about a new feature of a deck (they will) but whether that addition for those decks is worse than what mages do now.
Upping a few T2-3 decks slightly with a stable upgrade to slightly diminish an RNG based advantage to a tier 1 deck seems like a nice trade compared to, say, completely removing mountain giants from standard or gutting the mage deck entirely.
Again whether we need to do something is up for debate, but if we do, I'm not seeing a better alternative.