I have mixed feelings. On one hand, every bullet point in Rubin's list sounds like a good goal. I also want to see a lot of variety over time! But I also want to see healthy, fun metas at any given point in time. LoR has bounced between great metas and boring, oppressive ones, and it seems like the team may still consider that a success because things changed a lot. Also, I have enjoyed Hearthstone's recent approach in which they (usually) dial back the strong decks a little bit, still leaving them viable. It sounds like the LoR team may be too eager to kill current T1 decks just so new ones can arise.
Right now, Illaoi/Bard is clearly too strong, but it's a fun deck with a lot of healthy counterplay. Before this rose to the top, the first week or two of the new expansion was defined by really awful solitaire decks that raced to complete their win condition on turn 4 or 5. The upcoming balance changes nerf Bard more than everyone expected, nerf Illaoi slightly, and also hit Tentacle Smash. That feels like overkill, and I don't know if I can expect fun decks to arise back in its wake.
I complained a lot at first about this game being region-locked, but now I'm relieved. I can wait and see what they come up with before this rolls out to the US, and I don't have to have an opinion yet!
Their stance remains that new cards represent "more options" rather than "more power."
I always hear this, and not just from this game. It's a great approach in theory, and I'd love to see it, but it never fucking happens. If you want to base your system around something that's never worked before and currently isn't working for you, don't be surprised when your players get frustrated.
I called him clueless and said I'm not sure if the game can fix itself. That's not a defense of him.
I'm just trying to figure out why the game is set up this way, because it's actually a horrible way to earn money. Gamers are begging for a chance to spend money to craft the cards they want, and they're being ignored. That seems clueless to me.
Brode is getting a lot of flak for being greedy, but I think he might just be clueless. Or more specifically, he doesn't have a good handle on what players want from progression. He seems to have this idea that a lot of players will be happy just playing the game, progressing slowly, and having no way to get specific cards. That might have been true for a casual Magic player in the 90s, but today players NEED to have a way to get the specific card they want. It seems like if he wanted to shake everyone down for money, he could charge a lot more to let people open packs and get other cards specifically.
When you can pay to get certain cards early (through the monthly pass and these Nexus Events), his belief seems to be that since it's just a couple cards, it's no big deal. If you want to pay for it, that's great, but if you don't, it will be available through the normal progression system in a couple months. That's not at all how other people see it, though.
So what the game needs is a way to pay a moderate amount of money to get specific cards you want. Right now, the F2P system misses the mark in one way (no control), and the paid system misses the mark in another way (way too expensive, while still not having much control). Again, I don't think it's just greed, because it seems like they left a lot of money on the table by not giving you ways to get more control over your collection. The question is whether they can course correct. At least it's still in beta, but on the other hand, this requires a pretty big change.
Wow. I don’t play the game yet, but I just went and checked on the reaction in Reddit. Now, I expect most people on Reddit to be angry about any update. But even so, I was shocked at the level of vitriol. People are furious, and I can’t find a single person willing to defend i.
I guess this is why it’s still in beta. Hopefully they change quickly. Otherwise, I think the game is in trouble.
And the game is not covered here. I'm pretty sure I remember Flux saying firmly that he had no desire to include Gwent in Out of Cards. I'm not sure what changed.
There are some almost-good ideas here. I like the feeling of killing followers to gain power. I like a spell that protects a specific champion AND punishes your opponent for trying to target her. But I agree with everyone else that the final product feels lacking
Yeah. Part of me feels like I don’t need a major shake-up, because the current expansion is only two months old and seem pretty fresh. But even so, this one doesn't feel like it’s offering much…
I like this. It incentivizes the Rogue's opponent to interact with Secrets in a way that I don't think Hearthstone has had before. You WANT to trigger your opponent's Secrets before killing Halkias, or you want to try extra-hard not to trigger them after he dies. These seem like extra interesting decisions thanks to the secret revealed here: If you want to trigger it before killing Halkias, then you must spend all your mana and be prepared to kill him with minions. If you want to play around this Secret so that Halkias stays trapped, you face a high cost (leaving mana unspent). And if you trigger it when you aren't prepared for it, then Halkias appears at the end of your turn so he'll get to attack as soon as the Rogue's turn starts.
I agree that a 5/4 body in late game means very little, because it doesn't take too much effort to clear. However, it still means something. It will probably cost your opponent one more 2- or 3-mana spell, or force them to trade one more minion. Can they afford that at this point in the game? Certainly! But can they afford that on top of clearing the 4/4 Taunt and the 4/4 Soft Taunt and the 4/2? Not unless they have good AOE. My point is that even that minor addition matters when you're summoning a swarm of moderate-strength units.
It’s 1 mana cheaper PLUS you get a 5/4 body on the board. Normally, by turn 7 it doesn’t help much to get another minion that does nothing this turn. However, when it’s summoned alongside the three companions, an extra 5/4 minion seems like it would have some value.
I’m not going to say this is definitely worth the cost until I’ve played it - Infuse(8) sounds like quite a lot, and I’d be inclined to give him a couple more points of stats. But I can see where Blizzard is coming from with this, and unlike me they have had the chance to playtest it.
Relic of Dimensions shouldn’t get worse unless you reach fatigue. I think you’re assuming that it draws more and more cards, but it will never draw more than two. It’s the cost reduction that improves over time.
Ha ha. Why is my "all Nozdormu" deck listed in the hot options for this brawl? I don't know whether that was hand-picked or chosen by an algorithm, and I'm not sure which option would be funnier.
As the proud creator of this deck, I think I have the authority to say that you should absolutely NOT play any game with 22 copies of Nozdormu.
Update: I just got an achievement for having 1000 views of my deck.
Yes, you can always put off using your location until a later turn. You are sacrificing tempo, of course - Playing a 2-cost card that won't have any payoff until later is a little greedy (especially since the payoff is in the form of a minion that won't attack until the NEXT turn), but since locations can't be easily cleared and your later minion will be stealthed, at least you have a good chance of landing a hit with it eventually. I can imagine this working out.
Yep. For more information, see, well, almost every comment on Marvel Snap articles. Many people (including me) find it annoying.
FWIW, you shouldn’t find yourself very far behind when the game launches for real. The vast majority of players will be starting at that time, and all the rewards that came out during the beta season will be available again. You’ll notice there are some players higher than you on the ladder, but that’s normal unless you’re a very top player.
iPhones will let you change your location if you want to get into the beta early. I’ve heard mixed things from people who tried it: You can’t change your location if you have a gift card balance or certain subscriptions, and some people report problems with contacts and other data synched to iCloud. You can also make a new account if yo have an old phone lying around - just be prepared to come up with a new phone number when it tries to verify you’re a real person. In either case, it won’t question the fact that you’re claiming to be in the Philippines while using a non-Philippines IP.
Thanks, that makes sense. I still have a lot of questions when I wonder about it.
Since the game is being presented as a beta version, people who try it should have some patience with unpolished pieces. I know that some people will still be driven away and not come back to it. So does that mean that when they rolled it out early in the Philippines, they expected that it would permanently cost them some players there who would be underwhelmed and not come back? Or are users in the Philippines more forgiving of little problems in the game? If it's either of those answers, I don't see why it would be a good idea to roll it out in Australia next month: That's presumably a significant market with consumers who are as picky as Americans and Europeans, so I wouldn't want to put it out there if it's not ready for the rest of the world.
I assume that part of the reason for a phased roll-out like this is that they expect to have problems to fix. Once the first several thousand players try it out, you may realize that the progression doesn't always go like you want, that the new player training isn't teaching people as well as you expected, or something else. The development pipeline for a problem like that is probably several months - Coming up with a solution, getting it approved, developing it, and testing it takes time. For example, Hearthstone gives us a consistent drip of new content, but that's because they always have several things in different stages of development. Work on new expansions begins over a year in advance. And when an unexpected bug pops up, it often takes weeks to fix. When a totally unexpected problem like the excess coins in Mercenaries appears, it takes the better part of a year to see a correction. It does make sense that when a new game is rolled out for the first time, they need to prepare for the unexpected.
However, Marvel Snap doesn't seem to have had too many major issues. They are tweaking the credits and boosters, but have dismissed the larger concerns that some people have with progression. They are working on changes to matchmaking. Unless there are bigger fixes that they aren't talking about publicly, it doesn't seem like there is anything that would make the company decide to hold the game back from paying users.
(And the other reason I can see for a careful rollout is that they may not be sure how the back-end systems will scale as they get thousands or millions of users. That's definitely a concern, but these days adding more server resources is as simple as clicking some buttons on your AWS configuration. They might have some inefficiencies that get worse as they scale up, though, and admittedly that's something that they wouldn't have any reason to talk about publicly.)
So in short, I see some reasons for a careful phased rollout, but I don't fully understand why the rollout would go at this pace: Per my comments on this post, they've basically said that it will be a few months minimum before the game is available worldwide, but they are ready to open it up to another large audience right now.
I would love to know more about the logistics of rollout processes that leave the game unable to be played by most of the world. (Is anyone looking for a new article to publish? Hint, hint.) I assume that this is providing business value, or companies wouldn’t keep doing it, but it looks to me like they’re losing money when a game that’s mostly ready to go just isn’t available to most players. I mean, the game is finalized enough that they’re comfortable letting people in the Philippines pay real money, and now Australia and New Zealand are following suit. Why don’t they want to push the button that lets the rest of the world pay them money?
I have mixed feelings. On one hand, every bullet point in Rubin's list sounds like a good goal. I also want to see a lot of variety over time! But I also want to see healthy, fun metas at any given point in time. LoR has bounced between great metas and boring, oppressive ones, and it seems like the team may still consider that a success because things changed a lot. Also, I have enjoyed Hearthstone's recent approach in which they (usually) dial back the strong decks a little bit, still leaving them viable. It sounds like the LoR team may be too eager to kill current T1 decks just so new ones can arise.
Right now, Illaoi/Bard is clearly too strong, but it's a fun deck with a lot of healthy counterplay. Before this rose to the top, the first week or two of the new expansion was defined by really awful solitaire decks that raced to complete their win condition on turn 4 or 5. The upcoming balance changes nerf Bard more than everyone expected, nerf Illaoi slightly, and also hit Tentacle Smash. That feels like overkill, and I don't know if I can expect fun decks to arise back in its wake.
The details of the balance changes have allegedly been leaked. https://reddit.com/r/LegendsOfRuneterra/comments/wlqaup/_/ijv8p5q/?context=1
I complained a lot at first about this game being region-locked, but now I'm relieved. I can wait and see what they come up with before this rolls out to the US, and I don't have to have an opinion yet!
I always hear this, and not just from this game. It's a great approach in theory, and I'd love to see it, but it never fucking happens. If you want to base your system around something that's never worked before and currently isn't working for you, don't be surprised when your players get frustrated.
I called him clueless and said I'm not sure if the game can fix itself. That's not a defense of him.
I'm just trying to figure out why the game is set up this way, because it's actually a horrible way to earn money. Gamers are begging for a chance to spend money to craft the cards they want, and they're being ignored. That seems clueless to me.
Brode is getting a lot of flak for being greedy, but I think he might just be clueless. Or more specifically, he doesn't have a good handle on what players want from progression. He seems to have this idea that a lot of players will be happy just playing the game, progressing slowly, and having no way to get specific cards. That might have been true for a casual Magic player in the 90s, but today players NEED to have a way to get the specific card they want. It seems like if he wanted to shake everyone down for money, he could charge a lot more to let people open packs and get other cards specifically.
When you can pay to get certain cards early (through the monthly pass and these Nexus Events), his belief seems to be that since it's just a couple cards, it's no big deal. If you want to pay for it, that's great, but if you don't, it will be available through the normal progression system in a couple months. That's not at all how other people see it, though.
So what the game needs is a way to pay a moderate amount of money to get specific cards you want. Right now, the F2P system misses the mark in one way (no control), and the paid system misses the mark in another way (way too expensive, while still not having much control). Again, I don't think it's just greed, because it seems like they left a lot of money on the table by not giving you ways to get more control over your collection. The question is whether they can course correct. At least it's still in beta, but on the other hand, this requires a pretty big change.
Wow. I don’t play the game yet, but I just went and checked on the reaction in Reddit. Now, I expect most people on Reddit to be angry about any update. But even so, I was shocked at the level of vitriol. People are furious, and I can’t find a single person willing to defend i.
I guess this is why it’s still in beta. Hopefully they change quickly. Otherwise, I think the game is in trouble.
And the game is not covered here. I'm pretty sure I remember Flux saying firmly that he had no desire to include Gwent in Out of Cards. I'm not sure what changed.
There are some almost-good ideas here. I like the feeling of killing followers to gain power. I like a spell that protects a specific champion AND punishes your opponent for trying to target her. But I agree with everyone else that the final product feels lacking
Yeah. Part of me feels like I don’t need a major shake-up, because the current expansion is only two months old and seem pretty fresh. But even so, this one doesn't feel like it’s offering much…
I like this. It incentivizes the Rogue's opponent to interact with Secrets in a way that I don't think Hearthstone has had before. You WANT to trigger your opponent's Secrets before killing Halkias, or you want to try extra-hard not to trigger them after he dies. These seem like extra interesting decisions thanks to the secret revealed here: If you want to trigger it before killing Halkias, then you must spend all your mana and be prepared to kill him with minions. If you want to play around this Secret so that Halkias stays trapped, you face a high cost (leaving mana unspent). And if you trigger it when you aren't prepared for it, then Halkias appears at the end of your turn so he'll get to attack as soon as the Rogue's turn starts.
I agree that a 5/4 body in late game means very little, because it doesn't take too much effort to clear. However, it still means something. It will probably cost your opponent one more 2- or 3-mana spell, or force them to trade one more minion. Can they afford that at this point in the game? Certainly! But can they afford that on top of clearing the 4/4 Taunt and the 4/4 Soft Taunt and the 4/2? Not unless they have good AOE. My point is that even that minor addition matters when you're summoning a swarm of moderate-strength units.
It’s 1 mana cheaper PLUS you get a 5/4 body on the board. Normally, by turn 7 it doesn’t help much to get another minion that does nothing this turn. However, when it’s summoned alongside the three companions, an extra 5/4 minion seems like it would have some value.
I’m not going to say this is definitely worth the cost until I’ve played it - Infuse(8) sounds like quite a lot, and I’d be inclined to give him a couple more points of stats. But I can see where Blizzard is coming from with this, and unlike me they have had the chance to playtest it.
Relic of Dimensions shouldn’t get worse unless you reach fatigue. I think you’re assuming that it draws more and more cards, but it will never draw more than two. It’s the cost reduction that improves over time.
Ha ha. Why is my "all Nozdormu" deck listed in the hot options for this brawl? I don't know whether that was hand-picked or chosen by an algorithm, and I'm not sure which option would be funnier.
As the proud creator of this deck, I think I have the authority to say that you should absolutely NOT play any game with 22 copies of Nozdormu.
Update: I just got an achievement for having 1000 views of my deck.
Yes, you can always put off using your location until a later turn. You are sacrificing tempo, of course - Playing a 2-cost card that won't have any payoff until later is a little greedy (especially since the payoff is in the form of a minion that won't attack until the NEXT turn), but since locations can't be easily cleared and your later minion will be stealthed, at least you have a good chance of landing a hit with it eventually. I can imagine this working out.
Yep. For more information, see, well, almost every comment on Marvel Snap articles. Many people (including me) find it annoying.
FWIW, you shouldn’t find yourself very far behind when the game launches for real. The vast majority of players will be starting at that time, and all the rewards that came out during the beta season will be available again. You’ll notice there are some players higher than you on the ladder, but that’s normal unless you’re a very top player.
iPhones will let you change your location if you want to get into the beta early. I’ve heard mixed things from people who tried it: You can’t change your location if you have a gift card balance or certain subscriptions, and some people report problems with contacts and other data synched to iCloud. You can also make a new account if yo have an old phone lying around - just be prepared to come up with a new phone number when it tries to verify you’re a real person. In either case, it won’t question the fact that you’re claiming to be in the Philippines while using a non-Philippines IP.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "iOS inclusion", but this is what we know so far. Does it answer your questions?
Thanks, that makes sense. I still have a lot of questions when I wonder about it.
Since the game is being presented as a beta version, people who try it should have some patience with unpolished pieces. I know that some people will still be driven away and not come back to it. So does that mean that when they rolled it out early in the Philippines, they expected that it would permanently cost them some players there who would be underwhelmed and not come back? Or are users in the Philippines more forgiving of little problems in the game? If it's either of those answers, I don't see why it would be a good idea to roll it out in Australia next month: That's presumably a significant market with consumers who are as picky as Americans and Europeans, so I wouldn't want to put it out there if it's not ready for the rest of the world.
I assume that part of the reason for a phased roll-out like this is that they expect to have problems to fix. Once the first several thousand players try it out, you may realize that the progression doesn't always go like you want, that the new player training isn't teaching people as well as you expected, or something else. The development pipeline for a problem like that is probably several months - Coming up with a solution, getting it approved, developing it, and testing it takes time. For example, Hearthstone gives us a consistent drip of new content, but that's because they always have several things in different stages of development. Work on new expansions begins over a year in advance. And when an unexpected bug pops up, it often takes weeks to fix. When a totally unexpected problem like the excess coins in Mercenaries appears, it takes the better part of a year to see a correction. It does make sense that when a new game is rolled out for the first time, they need to prepare for the unexpected.
However, Marvel Snap doesn't seem to have had too many major issues. They are tweaking the credits and boosters, but have dismissed the larger concerns that some people have with progression. They are working on changes to matchmaking. Unless there are bigger fixes that they aren't talking about publicly, it doesn't seem like there is anything that would make the company decide to hold the game back from paying users.
(And the other reason I can see for a careful rollout is that they may not be sure how the back-end systems will scale as they get thousands or millions of users. That's definitely a concern, but these days adding more server resources is as simple as clicking some buttons on your AWS configuration. They might have some inefficiencies that get worse as they scale up, though, and admittedly that's something that they wouldn't have any reason to talk about publicly.)
So in short, I see some reasons for a careful phased rollout, but I don't fully understand why the rollout would go at this pace: Per my comments on this post, they've basically said that it will be a few months minimum before the game is available worldwide, but they are ready to open it up to another large audience right now.
I would love to know more about the logistics of rollout processes that leave the game unable to be played by most of the world. (Is anyone looking for a new article to publish? Hint, hint.) I assume that this is providing business value, or companies wouldn’t keep doing it, but it looks to me like they’re losing money when a game that’s mostly ready to go just isn’t available to most players. I mean, the game is finalized enough that they’re comfortable letting people in the Philippines pay real money, and now Australia and New Zealand are following suit. Why don’t they want to push the button that lets the rest of the world pay them money?