In all honesty, they could rotate some of these formats monthly and I'd be pretty happy with it. I just need some variance between Standard and Wild. Tribal could be a challenge for dragons and other tribes, one solution could be spell that spawn said 1/1 minions of that tribe. As for one of these formats becoming old really quick, that's inevitable, as for every mode that has came to the game. I see it as once the game has so much to do, it'll be hard to become tired of the game as a whole.
What you're describing is effectively tavern brawl, but focusing only on the constructed deck parts, which wouldn't be a bad idea but since tavern brawl already exists, its kinda hard to justify selling another mode thats essentially a larger and longer tavern brawl.
A slight comment on your comment about the tribal mode. Its a lot bigger problem than what I initially pointed out as an example. Murlocs and totems have more synergies than other tribes and are more or less confined within their own tribes. This is not the case for others, with the current pool of cards anyway. In order to make this work, team5 would have to create more cards, but the biggest problem would be, to paraphrase an old adage, "if everything is a tribe, then there are no tribes". Imagine an all or nothing murloc deck. Murloc Warleader might as well just read "all your minions have 2 attack". Where's the downside of a deck building constraint that comes with a tribe-heavy deck when we're only permitted to play said tribe cards? There's no conditions to fulfill, if the condition itself is mandatory from the start.
A format in which Wild sets rotate in and out was tried in the past, and it was terrible. I wouldn't be opposed to them trying it again though.
The only instant I can remember of this was a tavern brawl that actually managed this, allowing us to only use cards from 3 different expansions (cant remember which, but GvG was certainly part of it). From what I recall, it was a smashing success for the few brief days it was up. The only downside was that it only lasted a few days so it seemed a waste of dust for those without the cards and only committed to standard.
Maybe I'm missing something here, but to me that was one of the few tavern brawls I actually played just for the fun of it. Would be more than glad to see it full time.
It could be harder to sell, but I think another ladder format, of a certain kind, would be welcomed. We as players are used to Standard and Wild and I don't think many would be against the idea of a new way to climb ladder.
I see what you're saying with Tribal, and you're right. Murlocs have the most synergy and can stampede a board rather quickly. Team 5 could print more cards to support other Tribes to be on par with Murlocs, but the likelihood of that happening is equivalent to getting Tournament mode.
I remember what it was, it was the Doom in the Tomb event where a number of cards came back and created a meta which funnily enough, was defined by Evolve Shaman. I didn't like that event itself since the Wild cards stayed for wat too long, but I wouldn't be opposed to something similar happening again.
Most of your suggestions are perhaps more suitable as a weekly rotating tavern brawl, because they tend to get old really fast, as well as presenting more problems of their own. Something like pauper mode might look good on paper but in practice is basically reducing hearthstone to curvestone, while Tribal would be unfeasible since there's basically not enough support for anything other than totems and murlocs. There's no 1 mana dragon, for example, and there's only like 2 feasible 1 drop demons, both coincidentally are locked in warlock.
The new formats must also fulfill that one corporate criteria of generating profit. Duels fulfilled it via paywall and heroics mode, and so it follows that if a new format must be introduced at all, I'm sure it must go the same route; either paywalling certain features, or present a tacit requirement for players to spend some* money to have fun in it.
I personally like the idea of a rotating 'limited wild' system, with the cards available for this format to change with every expansion. Will certainly be easier to balance, and will allow us to play with decks from previous metas. It wouldn't even take team5 that much to make it happen. But I hold little hope of seeing this ever coming through. Unless there's some pass you have to buy (either in gold or real money) every expansion to play this mode, I just can't see this design document ever getting past management approval.
In all honesty, they could rotate some of these formats monthly and I'd be pretty happy with it. I just need some variance between Standard and Wild. Tribal could be a challenge for dragons and other tribes, one solution could be spell that spawn said 1/1 minions of that tribe. As for one of these formats becoming old really quick, that's inevitable, as for every mode that has came to the game. I see it as once the game has so much to do, it'll be hard to become tired of the game as a whole.
These formats will not generate revenue on their own merit, but will more or less add to the incentive of buying new cards/packs. Standard creates the largest sources of revenue in the game and these formats are more or less "piggy-backing" off of Standard. Some don't require additional purchases outside of Standard but at the same time they make the idea of purchasing packs that much more attractive.
A format in which Wild sets rotate in and out was tried in the past, and it was terrible. I wouldn't be opposed to them trying it again though.
I feel that would allow a lot of older cards to see play in a meta that doesn't have all the insane crap that wild offers.
That's really it. Everyone who plays Standard plays like they're at Grandmasters and must always run a meta deck at all times. In Wild it feels like players are trying to get into the Wild Open (RIP). I just want a format that utilizes other cards than what's dominating Wild and what's meta defining in Standard.
Assuming the main aim is to have a dynamic and interesting meta, the easiest (both to implement and come up with) is to just have a rapidly rotating Wild format. E.g. Basic + Classic* + 3 expansions, with the expansions changing every month. Something of the sort gets suggested often, and the beauty of it is that it is obvious it will work: the meta has to change, the reduced pool of cards gives everything a chance to shine, and balance issues resolve themselves quickly.
* I would keep Basic around, but wouldn't be against to switching out Classic.
My thoughts on your other suggestions:
Explorer: the perfect solution on paper, but is probably too complicated to make work in practice. After all, there will always be something on top, and removing overplayed cards will just lead to other cards being overplayed, which will then be removed etc.
Similar to my thoughts on Tower below, using ban lists feels at odds to HS's usual exploitation of it being a digital game, where nerfs take their place.
Pauper: this reminds me of the Tavern Brawl where you could only use Basic and Classic cards of common and rare rarities. The issue with that brawl is that a lot of important and interesting tools are epic or legendary, so the decks are typically very restricted and there's not as much fun to be had as you first expect imo.
Tower: it'll be fine, but it feels like HS trying to be something it is not. If that is how you want to be playing, then why aren't you just plating MtG instead?
I know it's not quite as simple as that, but I'd rather the devs made HS the best HS can be, rather than devoting time to making is more like something else.
Tribal: say hello to a perpetual murloc meta! This feels too restrictive to be interesting to me, especially as most tribes want support from generally good minions or synergy outside of the tribe itself.
Two-Headed Ogre: this was a recent Brawl, and it is well suited to something that lasts 1 week. The main issue I had with the Brawl is we were strongly incentivised to lean heavily on the hero power to screw over the other 9 classes that have different hero powers, meaning you either had mirror matches or had 15 useless cards in the deck.
You are correct in assuming the aim, which is not only to keep the meta dynamic and interesting, but to keep A meta dynamic and interesting. Also to give those who have full collections a little more variety.
Explorer: The goal of explorer is to allow other classes/archetypes to be on top, at least for a little bit. Not in the scale of Wild where the same decks are constantly being ran for years on end. I prefer card removals instead of all out nerfs. Removals allow for a bit more control in this format without changing others. It worked for Odd/Even decks, it can also work here is how I'm looking at it. I'm not disregarding what you said about nerfing cards instead of removing them, but in a for mat such as explorer, they need for nerfs would be far less.
Pauper: It is a slow format but I only recall the Brawl just being Classic and Basic? Correct me if I'm wrong. I should have clarified this could be applied to either Standard or Wild, or both depending. This is more or less an option for Free to Play players to have so they don't have to struggle so much with cost of the game. I'm a whale, I don't feel that struggle but I think this would be a fair idea for players who have a limited collection.
Tower: This is my way of saying that I'm tired of scenarios where "I should've played around the Pyroblast that was created by the Wand Thief that was created by First Day of School". I'm not asking for a restructure of Standard, just somewhere there's not insane RNG. Praise Yogg but everybody gets tired of praising him every now and then.
Tribal: I wouldn't say a perpetual Murloc meta, but it's something little change things up. Maybe Team 5 will test it as a brawl someday.
Two-Headed Ogre: I don't remember that Brawl, can you post a link?
I really just want other ladder experiences other than what we've had since the inception of Wild if that makes sense.
In the past year, Hearthstone has made great strides to offer new content for players. A new Class, Dual-Class Cards, an achievement system, a Battle-Pass (that nobody asked for), the Duels mode, additional minions, tribes, and heroes for Battlegrounds. Now this doesn't look like much, but to be honest this is a lot of content in one year when you compare it to previous years' habits of rinse, wash, repeat. Unfortunately with all the strides that Team 5 has made to make the game better, I've felt an itch that just can't be scratched, and that's the lack of formats.
Everyone here, since this is being posted in the Hearthstone part of the site, is familiar with Standard and Wild. We know how the rotations work, what cards are legal, and what to expect in April of any given year. So I ask, is it enough? Is Standard and Wild enough formats to play on the ladder? My answer is simply no and there are two main reasons for this answer. The Metas, and the collection.
The Meta within Standard waxes and wanes depending on balance changes, combo & archetype discoveries, and obviously the new cards that roll in every ~4 months (with the exception of this and perhaps future expansion cycles). The Meta gets changed up quite a bit on the release of a new expansion which is expected, and can be changed drastically like what we're currently seeing with Evolve Shaman after Demon Hunter got rebalanced. Eventually when Team 5 either throw their hands up and discreetly decide that Standard has had enough balance changes or is more or less into full swing of expansion reveal to keep everyone occupied, the Meta settles and become monotonous. Of course they're trying to remedy this by releasing a mid-expansion set of cards to hopefully shake it up enough, but either way that Meta will settle and players will get bored.
The Meta in Wild, for lack of better terms, has its' roots more planted than that of Standard. We all know Raza & Rez Priest, we all know Odd Paladin, we all know Secret Mage, we all know Bloodreaver Warlock, we all know Dead Man's Warrior, and so on. The deck variety in Wild will always be greater than that in Standard, but that does not mean better. Of the decks listed above, I've never once said to myself "Oh boy! I get to go against (Insert Deck name here) again!" Yeah playing against Galakrond Rogue sucked for a time but at least it was only a Meta deck for so long, as opposed to Wild decks where these offenders will be present until there's literally a card printed out exclusively to combat them. So Wild has its own level of staleness, which funnily enough is at the same time worse, and better than the staleness of Standard.
The second issue is the collection aspect, this is more of a Wild exclusive topic. This topic more aimed towards players who don't/haven't disenchanted their Wild cards. Currently in the game we have ~2,500 collectable cards, and not many of them are playable in terms of being viable in the Wild meta. Additionally, some of these cards never got support after their release, looking at you Moorabi. Beyond cards not getting support we also have powercreep which is something that can't always be avoided and in a way is needed for players to become better, an example being Silverback Patriarch and literally any other 3-cost Taunt minion. Those two simple things combined with the vast amount of cards available in Wild makes wanting a complete collection that much less important.
The only slight remedy of the having a complete or near complete collection being almost useless is the new Duels mode. Some could say that this validates a reasoning for players to hold onto old cards, and it does, but not all players like the idea of drafting cards, myself being one of them. But that's a mode that comes down to personal preference.
So all that above culminating to the point I wanted to make. It's time for Hearthstone to get a new format, preferably this one ;). Joking aside, I, as well as other players, are tired of being stuck in between a format that has the tired same old gimmicks since a deck's inception, and a format that gets stale even when new cards arrive. Some of you may say "Well if Team 5 does add another format, it'll get stale, people will complain about it's imbalances, and won't fix anything long term." Which is true but if Team 5 were to not add just one, but maybe two new formats, it'll give players enough to shuffle in between without getting bored/burned out as easily. Let's also take a step back and brainstorm what those could be.
Explorer - A format in which cards, depending on the amount they were played, get rotated out until the new Hearthstone year.
Pauper - A format in which only common rarity cards are allowed.
Tower - A format in which "random" is not allowed, and in which cards that create other cards is not allowed.
Tribal - A format in which all minions must share the same minion type.
Two-Headed Ogre - Make a 15 card deck, combine it with someone else's 15 card deck, and you go against two other players with their combined 15 card decks.
Hell, maybe even a format that rotates with expansions. What if we had Classic, Basic, Darkmoon Faire, and Whispers of the Old Gods in their own format for 4 months until the next expansion? This could've also been done when Boomsday came out, it could've shared a format with Goblins Vs. Gnomes along with mechs from other expansions.
To anyone reading this: how have you strategised your pack opening? So far I've opened just enough to get all the rares. I'm holding back in case there are more desirable legendaries or epics in the mini expansion. Am I overthinking this; it feels stifling not opening all my packs immediately.
I’m still sitting on 70 packs, feels pretty shitty.....
Genuine question: Why even try to be competitive in Hearthstone?
In the end, competitiveness in HS is reaching a level where if you lose, it's only because you could have played better instead of being able to afford better cards. You can try again, improve yourself or switch some tech cards around. That's where the fun of success begins. No hard feelings, I hope you understand my viewpoint.
I respect that answer, but it almost seems impossible because 'playing better' simply doesn't exist anymore due to the amount of 'Created by' RNG in the game.
Blizzard has been moving in a direction where they only care about whales. Only they are allowed to have fun. All other player demographics must suck it up and play 1-2 decks for scraps of rewards. Any steps forward in easing the problem like duplicate protection has been followed by opposite actions. The progression system rework solved nothing, only obfuscated the reward process and introduced another money sink for whales.
I disagree, we've gotten two new game modes within a year that don't absolutely require money or gold to play. Are there perks to spending money/gold for those modes? Absolutely. Are they required? Not really.
If you want to be remotely competitive, then Yes.
Genuine question: Why even try to be competitive in Hearthstone?
For Standard ladder I can kind of sympathize with those budget players who are really putting in the effort by finished in high Legend at the end of each month and attending tournaments/events. From my perspective, unless playing Hearthstone is a full time job, why are some players so adamant about being competitive?
I'd totally understand if they got invited to Blizzard tournaments/events but they just don't, not to any fault of their own of course. While Blizzard keeps hosting events that only streamers and influencers ever really get to participate in. I'm sure you see where I'm going with this, it just makes me scratch my head when a player states that they're "competitive" but aren't really trying to get into the pro scene.
Maybe we have differing definitions of what competitive means.
Blizzard has been moving in a direction where they only care about whales. Only they are allowed to have fun. All other player demographics must suck it up and play 1-2 decks for scraps of rewards. Any steps forward in easing the problem like duplicate protection has been followed by opposite actions. The progression system rework solved nothing, only obfuscated the reward process and introduced another money sink for whales.
I disagree, we've gotten two new game modes within a year that don't absolutely require money or gold to play. Are there perks to spending money/gold for those modes? Absolutely. Are they required? Not really.
Out of Cards is the most civil Hearthstone related forum period.
The reward system has players up in arms for a few reasons but I'm going to highlight two. The first being that Team 5 lied, kind of. Are players able to get more gold with the new Rewards Track? The answer to that question is objectively yes. Are ALL players going to be able to reasonably earn more gold than what they previously did? Probably not, I honestly don't know. What I can say is that I'm not passing judgement on the system until I am able to look at what I'VE earned by the next expansion. What I will say however is that we're barely a month into the Rewards Track and some people have already hit level 50, so is the outrage really justifiable without seeing the end result? The second reason is that the communities (mainly found on r/hearthstone and the official forums) kind of fuel this, for lack of a better term, Rage Machine where it's a continuous cycle of hate regardless of what the issue is. If it's not the Rewards Track, it's Demon Hunter, if not that, it's Shaman, if not that, it's Tickatus Warlock, if not that..... you get my point.
AFKing is unfortunately here to stay now, regardless of what Team 5 does. If Team 5 DC's players who are AFKing those player will just write/get scripts that 'play' the game for them by making them buy and sell random minions with no rhyme or reason.
Honestly, I was fine with the old system. I like that Hearthstone ASKED for my time instead of DEMANDING it. I've always had fun playing Hearthstone, whenever the meta had gotten ridiculously broken in Standard I would bounce over to Wild with one of my meme decks and go to town. I'm not trying to climb ladder every month and I'll never be a pro player so I don't feel the need to grind like some of these kids who cry over everything do.
Part of me hopes Blizzard doesn't respond, part of me really wants to see that most, if not all, players hit level 50 and get around the same amount of gold they would have before. Just so I can get some good hardy laughs out of the goldmine that r/hearthstonecirclejerk will become.
I get that you're trying to look at this in a positive light, bravo by the way, but what you're missing is that some of the loudest players (meaning constantly complaining about the game regardless of what's happening) are entitled to something they aren't even paying for. Not meaning that one MUST pay blizzard money but I think the F2P players have forgotten the only thing they've invested into the game is their time. The P2P players feel burned as well because they were most likely on a budget and now FOMO will get to them hard. I haven't seen many Whales say anything about it, unless I've just missed the posts. As a whale I'm just gonna cut my spending on the game, it's absolutely atrocious that the Rewards track isn't included into the Mega Bundle.
additional, new packs will come out, which means, one has to spend the earned gold midexpansion.
This can be remediate by not opening all the packs you’ve earned on day 1 of the expansion. I’m still sitting on 70 packs and it doesn’t feel great knowing that I have at least 1-2 legendary cards just waiting to be opened.
The best way to solve this (in my opinion) is simply by releasing the 35 cards for $20 while simultaneously adding the to the card pool of the associated packs.
But what do I know? I’m just a faceless voice with some common sense.
A good chunk of the outcry could've been mitigated if Team 5 put out how much XP a player is guaranteed during said events. "If you complete this series of quests you'll get X amount of experience for your rewards track!" would have been great to hear. Even if that were said it wouldn't alleviate that SLOG that is the Rewards Track. Just hit 26 and it honestly feels like games are not generating enough XP.
Speaking of which, are we going to get some sort of way to see and compare our scores with other users on this site? I'm guessing that may be a bit dependent on HSreplay.
Before I start, I'm going to make it clear that I'm not for or against the new system because I don't know how my net gold or rewards will look at the end of this expansion cycle.
- I am currently level 18 (with the XP boost from purchasing) while only playing ~1-2 hours a day so that means, according to this table found here, that I have earned at least 23,400 experience in three days by doing dailies, weeklies, and random achievement bonuses. That being said, an expansion cycle is (typically) 4 months/~120 days. So if we do the math; 23,400 divided by 3 is 7,800. Now multiply that by 120 and we get 936,000, which according to the graph table listed above puts me at maxing out the rewards track. If my math is wrong please correct me, and I'm not making a case for the rewards track, I'm just putting out what I (super capitalized) have gotten to and what I might get to by the end of this cycle.
When the new track was released they filled out our quest bar with 3 normal quests and 3 weeklies (I think that includes the duels quest which awards scholomance packs). So technically you're counting the xp gained in the last 3 days using a metric where you've fully completed 5 dailies and 3 weeklies. Wouldn't be representative
Disclude the achievements xp. Its one time only and its a pain in the arse to complete. I wouldn't use it as a metric anyway.
To properly calculate it, just imagine a week's worth of quest plus a decent amount of playtime xp. The math is readily available in reddit if you're interested. Just add in your 10% boost.
Its not possible to max out without playing at least 5 hours a day. Even with the boost I'm sure its impossible to achieve without committing like full time to it.
Agreed with this. @griffior - do those calculations again at the start of next week, when you don't have the front-loaded dump of all sorts of extra exp to get started. THAT will be the accurate metric of how much exp you will get daily
So let me redo the math instead, let's subtract all the daily quests up to day three when this thread was made. Which takes away roughly ~5000 XP away from the sum I had at that time. So the total would be 18,400 XP, divided by three which is 6,133. Then multiply that by ~120 is 736,000 which still puts me at above maxing out the Track. However one thing I forgot about for the initial calculation were the achievements that I may have gotten which bloated the total amount of XP. As you can tell it's just too late to try to calculate this mess, our best option is to wait for the next track to start making calculations.
I'm currently at level 23 today and the grind is definitely there and it feels especially bad because now instead of achievements being a happy accidents I'm finding myself Achievement Hunting, which is not something I like doing at my age.
One thing I'd like to add however is that the Rewards Track is only a ~week old and I'm already almost halfway through it and I'm saying this is a good thing, I'm saying that the potential for a real grindfest is still possible towards the end of the track which is something I am absolutely not looking forward to.
It could be harder to sell, but I think another ladder format, of a certain kind, would be welcomed. We as players are used to Standard and Wild and I don't think many would be against the idea of a new way to climb ladder.
I see what you're saying with Tribal, and you're right. Murlocs have the most synergy and can stampede a board rather quickly. Team 5 could print more cards to support other Tribes to be on par with Murlocs, but the likelihood of that happening is equivalent to getting Tournament mode.
I remember what it was, it was the Doom in the Tomb event where a number of cards came back and created a meta which funnily enough, was defined by Evolve Shaman. I didn't like that event itself since the Wild cards stayed for wat too long, but I wouldn't be opposed to something similar happening again.
In all honesty, they could rotate some of these formats monthly and I'd be pretty happy with it. I just need some variance between Standard and Wild. Tribal could be a challenge for dragons and other tribes, one solution could be spell that spawn said 1/1 minions of that tribe. As for one of these formats becoming old really quick, that's inevitable, as for every mode that has came to the game. I see it as once the game has so much to do, it'll be hard to become tired of the game as a whole.
These formats will not generate revenue on their own merit, but will more or less add to the incentive of buying new cards/packs. Standard creates the largest sources of revenue in the game and these formats are more or less "piggy-backing" off of Standard. Some don't require additional purchases outside of Standard but at the same time they make the idea of purchasing packs that much more attractive.
A format in which Wild sets rotate in and out was tried in the past, and it was terrible. I wouldn't be opposed to them trying it again though.
I made a concept for that, but I think it's too complicated for a game with 7 year old code to implement.
That's really it. Everyone who plays Standard plays like they're at Grandmasters and must always run a meta deck at all times. In Wild it feels like players are trying to get into the Wild Open (RIP). I just want a format that utilizes other cards than what's dominating Wild and what's meta defining in Standard.
You are correct in assuming the aim, which is not only to keep the meta dynamic and interesting, but to keep A meta dynamic and interesting. Also to give those who have full collections a little more variety.
Explorer: The goal of explorer is to allow other classes/archetypes to be on top, at least for a little bit. Not in the scale of Wild where the same decks are constantly being ran for years on end. I prefer card removals instead of all out nerfs. Removals allow for a bit more control in this format without changing others. It worked for Odd/Even decks, it can also work here is how I'm looking at it. I'm not disregarding what you said about nerfing cards instead of removing them, but in a for mat such as explorer, they need for nerfs would be far less.
Pauper: It is a slow format but I only recall the Brawl just being Classic and Basic? Correct me if I'm wrong. I should have clarified this could be applied to either Standard or Wild, or both depending. This is more or less an option for Free to Play players to have so they don't have to struggle so much with cost of the game. I'm a whale, I don't feel that struggle but I think this would be a fair idea for players who have a limited collection.
Tower: This is my way of saying that I'm tired of scenarios where "I should've played around the Pyroblast that was created by the Wand Thief that was created by First Day of School". I'm not asking for a restructure of Standard, just somewhere there's not insane RNG. Praise Yogg but everybody gets tired of praising him every now and then.
Tribal: I wouldn't say a perpetual Murloc meta, but it's something little change things up. Maybe Team 5 will test it as a brawl someday.
Two-Headed Ogre: I don't remember that Brawl, can you post a link?
I really just want other ladder experiences other than what we've had since the inception of Wild if that makes sense.
In the past year, Hearthstone has made great strides to offer new content for players. A new Class, Dual-Class Cards, an achievement system, a Battle-Pass (that nobody asked for), the Duels mode, additional minions, tribes, and heroes for Battlegrounds. Now this doesn't look like much, but to be honest this is a lot of content in one year when you compare it to previous years' habits of rinse, wash, repeat. Unfortunately with all the strides that Team 5 has made to make the game better, I've felt an itch that just can't be scratched, and that's the lack of formats.
Everyone here, since this is being posted in the Hearthstone part of the site, is familiar with Standard and Wild. We know how the rotations work, what cards are legal, and what to expect in April of any given year. So I ask, is it enough? Is Standard and Wild enough formats to play on the ladder? My answer is simply no and there are two main reasons for this answer. The Metas, and the collection.
The Meta within Standard waxes and wanes depending on balance changes, combo & archetype discoveries, and obviously the new cards that roll in every ~4 months (with the exception of this and perhaps future expansion cycles). The Meta gets changed up quite a bit on the release of a new expansion which is expected, and can be changed drastically like what we're currently seeing with Evolve Shaman after Demon Hunter got rebalanced. Eventually when Team 5 either throw their hands up and discreetly decide that Standard has had enough balance changes or is more or less into full swing of expansion reveal to keep everyone occupied, the Meta settles and become monotonous. Of course they're trying to remedy this by releasing a mid-expansion set of cards to hopefully shake it up enough, but either way that Meta will settle and players will get bored.
The Meta in Wild, for lack of better terms, has its' roots more planted than that of Standard. We all know Raza & Rez Priest, we all know Odd Paladin, we all know Secret Mage, we all know Bloodreaver Warlock, we all know Dead Man's Warrior, and so on. The deck variety in Wild will always be greater than that in Standard, but that does not mean better. Of the decks listed above, I've never once said to myself "Oh boy! I get to go against (Insert Deck name here) again!" Yeah playing against Galakrond Rogue sucked for a time but at least it was only a Meta deck for so long, as opposed to Wild decks where these offenders will be present until there's literally a card printed out exclusively to combat them. So Wild has its own level of staleness, which funnily enough is at the same time worse, and better than the staleness of Standard.
The second issue is the collection aspect, this is more of a Wild exclusive topic. This topic more aimed towards players who don't/haven't disenchanted their Wild cards. Currently in the game we have ~2,500 collectable cards, and not many of them are playable in terms of being viable in the Wild meta. Additionally, some of these cards never got support after their release, looking at you Moorabi. Beyond cards not getting support we also have powercreep which is something that can't always be avoided and in a way is needed for players to become better, an example being Silverback Patriarch and literally any other 3-cost Taunt minion. Those two simple things combined with the vast amount of cards available in Wild makes wanting a complete collection that much less important.
The only slight remedy of the having a complete or near complete collection being almost useless is the new Duels mode. Some could say that this validates a reasoning for players to hold onto old cards, and it does, but not all players like the idea of drafting cards, myself being one of them. But that's a mode that comes down to personal preference.
So all that above culminating to the point I wanted to make. It's time for Hearthstone to get a new format, preferably this one ;). Joking aside, I, as well as other players, are tired of being stuck in between a format that has the tired same old gimmicks since a deck's inception, and a format that gets stale even when new cards arrive. Some of you may say "Well if Team 5 does add another format, it'll get stale, people will complain about it's imbalances, and won't fix anything long term." Which is true but if Team 5 were to not add just one, but maybe two new formats, it'll give players enough to shuffle in between without getting bored/burned out as easily. Let's also take a step back and brainstorm what those could be.
Explorer - A format in which cards, depending on the amount they were played, get rotated out until the new Hearthstone year.
Pauper - A format in which only common rarity cards are allowed.
Tower - A format in which "random" is not allowed, and in which cards that create other cards is not allowed.
Tribal - A format in which all minions must share the same minion type.
Two-Headed Ogre - Make a 15 card deck, combine it with someone else's 15 card deck, and you go against two other players with their combined 15 card decks.
Hell, maybe even a format that rotates with expansions. What if we had Classic, Basic, Darkmoon Faire, and Whispers of the Old Gods in their own format for 4 months until the next expansion? This could've also been done when Boomsday came out, it could've shared a format with Goblins Vs. Gnomes along with mechs from other expansions.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
I’m still sitting on 70 packs, feels pretty shitty.....
I respect that answer, but it almost seems impossible because 'playing better' simply doesn't exist anymore due to the amount of 'Created by' RNG in the game.
Genuine question: Why even try to be competitive in Hearthstone?
For Standard ladder I can kind of sympathize with those budget players who are really putting in the effort by finished in high Legend at the end of each month and attending tournaments/events. From my perspective, unless playing Hearthstone is a full time job, why are some players so adamant about being competitive?
I'd totally understand if they got invited to Blizzard tournaments/events but they just don't, not to any fault of their own of course. While Blizzard keeps hosting events that only streamers and influencers ever really get to participate in. I'm sure you see where I'm going with this, it just makes me scratch my head when a player states that they're "competitive" but aren't really trying to get into the pro scene.
Maybe we have differing definitions of what competitive means.
I disagree, we've gotten two new game modes within a year that don't absolutely require money or gold to play. Are there perks to spending money/gold for those modes? Absolutely. Are they required? Not really.
Out of Cards is the most civil Hearthstone related forum period.
The reward system has players up in arms for a few reasons but I'm going to highlight two. The first being that Team 5 lied, kind of. Are players able to get more gold with the new Rewards Track? The answer to that question is objectively yes. Are ALL players going to be able to reasonably earn more gold than what they previously did? Probably not, I honestly don't know. What I can say is that I'm not passing judgement on the system until I am able to look at what I'VE earned by the next expansion. What I will say however is that we're barely a month into the Rewards Track and some people have already hit level 50, so is the outrage really justifiable without seeing the end result? The second reason is that the communities (mainly found on r/hearthstone and the official forums) kind of fuel this, for lack of a better term, Rage Machine where it's a continuous cycle of hate regardless of what the issue is. If it's not the Rewards Track, it's Demon Hunter, if not that, it's Shaman, if not that, it's Tickatus Warlock, if not that..... you get my point.
AFKing is unfortunately here to stay now, regardless of what Team 5 does. If Team 5 DC's players who are AFKing those player will just write/get scripts that 'play' the game for them by making them buy and sell random minions with no rhyme or reason.
Honestly, I was fine with the old system. I like that Hearthstone ASKED for my time instead of DEMANDING it. I've always had fun playing Hearthstone, whenever the meta had gotten ridiculously broken in Standard I would bounce over to Wild with one of my meme decks and go to town. I'm not trying to climb ladder every month and I'll never be a pro player so I don't feel the need to grind like some of these kids who cry over everything do.
Part of me hopes Blizzard doesn't respond, part of me really wants to see that most, if not all, players hit level 50 and get around the same amount of gold they would have before. Just so I can get some good hardy laughs out of the goldmine that r/hearthstonecirclejerk will become.
I get that you're trying to look at this in a positive light, bravo by the way, but what you're missing is that some of the loudest players (meaning constantly complaining about the game regardless of what's happening) are entitled to something they aren't even paying for. Not meaning that one MUST pay blizzard money but I think the F2P players have forgotten the only thing they've invested into the game is their time. The P2P players feel burned as well because they were most likely on a budget and now FOMO will get to them hard. I haven't seen many Whales say anything about it, unless I've just missed the posts. As a whale I'm just gonna cut my spending on the game, it's absolutely atrocious that the Rewards track isn't included into the Mega Bundle.
This can be remediate by not opening all the packs you’ve earned on day 1 of the expansion. I’m still sitting on 70 packs and it doesn’t feel great knowing that I have at least 1-2 legendary cards just waiting to be opened.
The best way to solve this (in my opinion) is simply by releasing the 35 cards for $20 while simultaneously adding the to the card pool of the associated packs.
But what do I know? I’m just a faceless voice with some common sense.
On iOS, this is not the case. The ability to close the ad is there without having to scroll. What platform are you using?
20 Scholomance packs at the launch of a new expansion? Hard No.
A good chunk of the outcry could've been mitigated if Team 5 put out how much XP a player is guaranteed during said events. "If you complete this series of quests you'll get X amount of experience for your rewards track!" would have been great to hear. Even if that were said it wouldn't alleviate that SLOG that is the Rewards Track. Just hit 26 and it honestly feels like games are not generating enough XP.
I'm still holding onto 70+ packs whenever the mini set comes out.
Speaking of which, are we going to get some sort of way to see and compare our scores with other users on this site? I'm guessing that may be a bit dependent on HSreplay.
So let me redo the math instead, let's subtract all the daily quests up to day three when this thread was made. Which takes away roughly ~5000 XP away from the sum I had at that time. So the total would be 18,400 XP, divided by three which is 6,133. Then multiply that by ~120 is 736,000 which still puts me at above maxing out the Track. However one thing I forgot about for the initial calculation were the achievements that I may have gotten which bloated the total amount of XP. As you can tell it's just too late to try to calculate this mess, our best option is to wait for the next track to start making calculations.
I'm currently at level 23 today and the grind is definitely there and it feels especially bad because now instead of achievements being a happy accidents I'm finding myself Achievement Hunting, which is not something I like doing at my age.
One thing I'd like to add however is that the Rewards Track is only a ~week old and I'm already almost halfway through it and I'm saying this is a good thing, I'm saying that the potential for a real grindfest is still possible towards the end of the track which is something I am absolutely not looking forward to.
Had Tyrande since she came out, I've never seen her in the shop.
I wouldn't hold my breath. Sorry :(