That is the problem, isn't it? Game mode that was announced as PVE with added PVP for when you are all maxed out and want to measure your strength vs others has become a dull grind for coins so you can do only thing there is - PVP, which has extremelly high ceiling of entry in regards to mercs used (if we forget the ai battles). But the PVP itself is kinda pointless as well, since there isnt very many possible combinations or plays you can pull off.
So without any other things going on with the game mode, it basically failed to deliver on its intended purpose. As you said, the Dungeon Runs had better replayability than this.
Imho the bounties need a redo, make them longer, more meaningful and random with more stuff happenning in each run snd with a meaningful reward at the end. Not 5 min speedruns that noone really pays any attention to, because in this state, there is little reason to.
Truth. Duels, Dungeon runs, hell even single player adventures had more depth than this (thinking of the Saviors of Uldum bosses). It just feels like a very rushed mode. I for one stopped playing. I started playing actual good roguelite games on steam instead: (Shameless plug for good games: Look up "Rogue Lords" and "The Last Spell" on steam, they are VERY challenging but fun roguelites
Yea healing rain was my favorite control shaman card for the longest time. It's just so bloody effecient. 3 Mana Heal 12 is just so strong. Even though technically "Witches Brew" was an echo healing card and could heal for more (in theory), it cost way more mana to do so.
Amulet of Undying makes me angry for some reason. Like no, stop promoting Big Priest. Nobody likes it
Plenty of people like it. (like me)
I hate face hunter (as do many other people), you don't see me saying "stop promoting face hunter, nobody likes it" because I know that's not true. I may hate the deck, but I understand that some people enjoy it. It's not fair to try and find confirmation bias by saying "i hate big priest, therefore nobody likes big priest." (That's a logical fallacy you are employing.)
What you hate is long games where you get outvalued. The reason is: that's priests win condition (or was back in the days of big/rez priest). If you hate long games, what you hate is that your deck got countered.
TLDR: You don't hate big priest, you hate that your decks win condition can get hard countered if a priest reaches turn 10. What you fail to realize is that your deck is not a "one stop fits all" deck that can beat every deck. Sometimes you'll get hard countered. Understanding that, accepting it, and moving on will make your life much more enjoyable. Just a thought to consider.
Fuck me running. They really want Questline Pirate to be S Tier with Defias Cannoneer.
Yea, I'm already tired of the pirate warrior matchup as is, not sure why they are improving an already decent questline, instead of helping push other archetypes with the miniset.
I like the whole Passive Treasures’ revamp, but I am so triggered to see that Mind Tether Priest is still left unchecked. Fuck that deck.
also Diablo looks sooo nutty.
I seriously hate how dull and repetitive matchups against mind tether priest are.
By the way, did my shaman suggestion help you at all in that matchup? (Adding Healing Rains to your starting deck has helped me edge out wins against Tether priests in early fights where your health pool is most at risk.)
Sinti, there's always a great reply I have for discussion topics such as these...
Quote From Gamers
Civilization IV designers Soren Johnson and Sid Meier, who said, respectively: ” given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game,” and that, therefore, “one of the responsibilities of designers is to protect the player from themselves.”
Is it gating coins? Yea regardless of other factors, we can see that they are toning down the farming. I said it before and I'll say it again: A well designed game will make you not even realize you're wasting time, no matter what you do in that game and thus you have fun in the way of your choosing. A poorly designed game will make you realize you're wasting time not playing something "optimally" and the facade of fun melts away into "I must play this game perfectly else my time is wasted".
Time is something we irrevocably never get back, it's the penultimate "currency" we as humans spend every day and later on in life, it's the most precious thing to us (as we realize our time is running out.)
Playing games is meant to be fun, when players find ways to "wintrade" or "optimize coin farming" it sets the game's presence in the world.
Am I saying people aren't allowed to be effecient? No, of course not. But perhaps Blizzard is tired of trying to cater to all types of gamers. They are known for being fairly "casual" these days in all of their IP's and they way they've progressed them, and honestly I feel like maybe this is a direction that they are leaning into. If it scares off the streamers, hardcore players to other games, I don't think it's the worst thing in the world because the one thing that I find a worse problem than players optimizing the fun out of games is people who believe that every game should cater to every person's whim.
Games are designed with target audiences in mind. I don't play sports games (Madden, NBA, etc) because I find them dull, reptitive, and not really into sports. I also like shooter games, but not Call of Duty type games. Does this mean I need to go bitch on reddit/forums about how those games to cater to me or try to include me? No. I realize what I like and I dislike.
Anyhow point is: Gamers can (and have) twisted the market place of games into a different space. It's up to developers to make sure that their own vision for the game doesn't get swept under the bed by the clamoring of mass players demanding games cater to their every specific need.
I disagree with the articles summation that locking duels hero powers (based on collection thresholds) was a bad idea. There's nothing wrong with a mode that encourages you to widen your collection. The only reason I state this is because of this:
If you're new, you aren't expected to have a full collection right away...unless of course you buy packs. If you're "free2play' then you're gonna have to grind, for quite some time. I just honestly don't understand this dichotic mindset of "Sure, I'm a new player, but I need to unlock everything NOW otherwise this game is bad!". Uh no it's not. You don't unlock all the best gear in Diablo 2 within 2 hours. You don't complete Final Fantasy games immediately with perfect stats and 9999's within the first hour. So why do people expect to be able to "finish" a CCG if they don't unlock the entire collection of cards within a few months?
The second issue? "open, dust, create meta deck, dust, rinse and repeat". And what I mean by that, is that I've seen new players encouraged by others to "dust classes/decks/cards you don't play" in order to play meta decks they do want to play. And from an initial standpoint this seems like fine advice. And then time and time again I see threads of "I don't have enough dust to play X deck, what should I do?". And to be honest, it seems silly that people constantly dust their collection. It's extremely inefficient and anyone who dusts cards (besides nerfs) for the sake of making other meta decks beyond the first month of them playing Hearthstone is being foolish.
My 2 cents about the whole premise of unlocking things by increasing your collection.
It's a matter of "Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game". Doesn't matter if it's Hearthstone, Civilization, or Hello Kitty Island Adventure...
Blizzard: How would you guys like a new PvE casual mode with a slice of PvP in it?
Playerbase: *heavy breathing intensifies* Better crank up the grind-o-tron 3000 and no-life unlock everything in less than 2 weeks!
Im probably laying down the game for good. Its actually more about standard ranked being shit that Im still grinding out mercs in the first place.
Fair enough and part of the reason I dedicated a whole week to playing the new mode. I just find it extremely shallow (even Heroics included). Yes they are more challenging I do agree. But at the end of the day most fights play out very "samey".
Look I wasn't expecting them to make a Hearthstone version of "Slay the Spire" (though that would have been fantastic if they did), but at the same time I didn't expect them to create an experience so devoid of any actual variation that Saviors of Ulduum Dungeon Runs, or Duels look complex by comparison. I know it's still early on, and we can expect it to evolve and change, but generally speaking people only give modes "one first impression" and then they have a sour taste forever more.
I find the daybreak archetype is currently the best archetype for the Taric extra attack engine because it has high statted low cost aggressive units and the the best tools in targon demacia to devalue blockers (stun effects).
It doesnt need more than a double attack combo with 2 blockers stunned to win games and the deck doesn’t struggle to do that
I'm out of the loop on competitive meta decks (or how to build them) in LOR. I mainly play expeditions and silver (meme decks in LOR. How would you go about creating a Targon/Demacia with Leona as the archetype post balance adjustments?
I won't go into a ton of details right now. But ultimately I feel like Mercenaries is a failed (or rushed) mode. It was touted as this "pve" roguelite mode with a collecting aspect. Except as of right now there's no real reason to play it.
I enjoyed it for maybe the first week but it did get VERY boring VERY fast. I'm not saying the game needs to go "full cash p2w" mode, but in other similar games, the purpose for collecting and powering up your different "comps" (parties) is to take on a raid boss of sorts (aka, Raid Shadow Legends, Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes, etc). The reward? The raid boss usually drops some sort of "rare" shard (aka coin) for a unique hero. This unique hero is usually overpowered as hell.
Sorry, I could go on and compare this to others but I'll cut this rant short and say this:
If it's trying to do a collection of pokemon style heroes: it failed because pokemon allows more customization in how you train your pokemen through HM's, TM's, and stats.
If it's trying to do a roguelike mode, it failed hard there because the levels have EXTREMLY little variation on how they play out. Every fight is the same, and there's no rogue-lite aspect at all (no gathering of multiple treasures to take down a super hard boss, in fact I'd argue that you could easily take down the "boss" of each area without any treasures whatsoever)
If it's trying to do a gacha style game (as I mentioned above like RSL or SWGOH) then it failed there as well because 1) the pay model doesn't support it, and 2) the game doesn't currently have any "raid" bosses or any extremely hard objectives.
And lastly, if it is trying to do pvp content, we have much better pvp modes such as BG's, duels, arenas, and traditional HS available as is.
I don't normally say these things about Blizzard or Hearthstone, but I feel like this was a situation of "Trying to please everyone, and ending up pleasing no-one" situation. (aka "The Hollywood Method")
Yes, because often times starting stats (i.e. base stats) of a minion are during pivotal turns where that breakpoint of attack or health can make a difference. And that breakpoint creates a snowball effect (not necessarily for you either). Also in the case of Holy mecheral, it gains divine shield when a condition is fufilled. Thus people often treat divine shield as effectively "doubling" a minion's attack. (so that minion was dealing 16 damage out with baseline stats under semi-optimal conditions. Now it will only be dealing 12 damage out under the same circumstances.)
Hmm. So I guess this means Hearthstone is starting to do cross-IP stuff now. (even though I'm fairly certain they stated at some point in the past that they would not do that).
Not that I'm complaining, I just wonder if this means we'll see other cross IP characters in the future (i.e. Kerrigan, Jim Raynor, Tyrael, etc etc)
Well, out of the 4 PvP games I played as f2p, I found 3 bots. Really small sample size, but that's really discouraging at least on the PvP side.
The PvE side is fine. When first teased (before the delay), I was overexcited, when the reveal season started, I was underexcited, so yeah... it's better than the expectation I had during reveal season but not the amazing Slay the Spire-esque I wanted during the first tease.
I guess one of the reasons why is the fact that I still believe the biggest incentive behind the game mode was the monetization process rather than the gameplay. This doesn't mean there's no gameplay design, there was just a larger focus on trying to gain money of the game mode, which is fine. However, Battlegrounds was designed with the main focus being gameplay and it became the success it did because of it.
EDIT: Also, could Blizzard please speed up the animation after the dungeon is cleared and we get to the treasure? That animation is so slow it hurts.
How do you know they were bots?
Also, a way they could improve the difficulty of the mode is create "raid" encounters. (unless those exist in some fashion in blackrock mountain, I don't know, I haven't gotten there yet)
Raid encounters would require very specific team setups but would have great or rare rewards. If we are comparing apples to apples, or in this case "gachas to gachas". To cite another source: Galaxy of Heroes. Their raid encounters gave you "rare" shards. (aka coins for Hearthstone) . The raid had a 3 day cooldown or whatever if you successfully completed it, so you couldn't just farm it all the time. But the point was to gain access to newer (aka more powerful) characters to use in PvP modes.
I'm not sure I exactly want to see that. (We don't want PvP being dictated by whomever has the most money or whatever like Galaxy of Heroes essentially did), but the point is they could add alternative fun things that improve the replayability.
My other gripe is that for a "rogue-lite" game, it is missing some integral mechanics.
1) Maps are way too short, bosses are stupid easy as someone who pre ordered Diablo and TLK.
2) There are no "event" hubs on the map. Maybe this changes or Ive just been unlocky but so far the "mysterious event" has always been a stranger (that gives you tasks that help you unlock equipment), or an exploding potato (Which IMO is a double edged event, and seems dumb). Events give you a chance to gain power spikes or power losses (i.e. in other rogue lite games, they can give you equipment, powers, stats, etc) or if you fail the event, they can make it harder on you. It seems Blizz decided to go extremely simple in this area and remove events altogether because they feared the backlash of "negative events". However without risk/reward in the map, it becomes a simple repetitive game mode that doesn't draw you in.
3) The Spirit Healer "event" like other roguelikes, should provide you alternatives to just reviving a single member. If you choose a path with a spirit healer on it, and you have no dead members, it does nothing for you. In other rogue games, if you come across "rest" areas and don't actually need to reset, they usually provide you with an option to improve your plan, improve your party, etc.
Overall the game mode isn't "bad" but it's not as great as I thought it would be. I fear that it will become another Duels mode (popular for a week or two and then really only played by a few hardcore people)
Is there some way you could modify the database tags so you could reference them without using unique ID's (which I'm assuming is a value in the table that is foolproof to call upon), while most people use the "name" field without issue, obviously with duplicate names (as you mentioned Alexstraza) that becomes a problem.
Are there plans to have an alias database tag, so you could for example say card=MercAlexstraza1 (Merc Mode, Alexstraza, 1st skin) Just a thought... :)
Performance bug where playing Mercenaries for longer periods (around 1.5-2 hours) will cause lag and performance slowdowns, especially in devices with less RAM. The workaround at this time is to restart the client if that begins.
so they're launching mercenaries with a memory leak. that's just super.
To be fair, most applications have some form of a memory leak in some fashion. (The longer they run, the memory they use up due to logging, caching, etc) There's very few that can "indefinitely" run without the device/server being taken down for maintenance. Even "always on" applications/web services usually do a load balance from a primary site to a failover periodically without any end-users being none the wiser.
Is it great that the memory leak is enough of a problem for them to announce it ahead of time? No of course not. But at least they are acknowledging it. Feels like your comment is the quintessential response to the mindset "damned if you do, damned if you don't".
If they didn't announce it, people would be up in arms. They announced it, people (i.e. you) are still upset. I'm so glad I'm not in game development 'cause all developers have to deal with entitled customers but I'll tell ya, gamers are the next level of entitled most of the time. I wouldn't wish angry entitled gamers on my worst enemy.
Launching with bugs? Oh well, at least they're being honest with it. Not a good look though.
Kind of an odd take to be honest. Almost All software launches with bugs. They are either known (and not announced) or unknown, and later backlogged to fix.
I actually agree with a lot of what you said. I didn't realize it at first, but you're right. Why are we punished for managing healers properly? The run should just "end" if you die, not go "ok you revived, j/k!" and reduce your score. Battles do feel random. I don't necessarily mind the randomness of the cards offered though. (I think it helps people realize different unique combos that they wouldn't experiment with otherwise) and it does allow more than 2 regions (which is fun to have like 4 different champions and regions working together).
Truth. Duels, Dungeon runs, hell even single player adventures had more depth than this (thinking of the Saviors of Uldum bosses). It just feels like a very rushed mode. I for one stopped playing. I started playing actual good roguelite games on steam instead: (Shameless plug for good games: Look up "Rogue Lords" and "The Last Spell" on steam, they are VERY challenging but fun roguelites
Yea healing rain was my favorite control shaman card for the longest time. It's just so bloody effecient. 3 Mana Heal 12 is just so strong. Even though technically "Witches Brew" was an echo healing card and could heal for more (in theory), it cost way more mana to do so.
Plenty of people like it. (like me)
I hate face hunter (as do many other people), you don't see me saying "stop promoting face hunter, nobody likes it" because I know that's not true. I may hate the deck, but I understand that some people enjoy it. It's not fair to try and find confirmation bias by saying "i hate big priest, therefore nobody likes big priest." (That's a logical fallacy you are employing.)
What you hate is long games where you get outvalued. The reason is: that's priests win condition (or was back in the days of big/rez priest). If you hate long games, what you hate is that your deck got countered.
TLDR: You don't hate big priest, you hate that your decks win condition can get hard countered if a priest reaches turn 10. What you fail to realize is that your deck is not a "one stop fits all" deck that can beat every deck. Sometimes you'll get hard countered. Understanding that, accepting it, and moving on will make your life much more enjoyable. Just a thought to consider.
Yea, I'm already tired of the pirate warrior matchup as is, not sure why they are improving an already decent questline, instead of helping push other archetypes with the miniset.
I seriously hate how dull and repetitive matchups against mind tether priest are.
By the way, did my shaman suggestion help you at all in that matchup? (Adding Healing Rains to your starting deck has helped me edge out wins against Tether priests in early fights where your health pool is most at risk.)
Sinti, there's always a great reply I have for discussion topics such as these...
Is it gating coins? Yea regardless of other factors, we can see that they are toning down the farming. I said it before and I'll say it again: A well designed game will make you not even realize you're wasting time, no matter what you do in that game and thus you have fun in the way of your choosing. A poorly designed game will make you realize you're wasting time not playing something "optimally" and the facade of fun melts away into "I must play this game perfectly else my time is wasted".
Time is something we irrevocably never get back, it's the penultimate "currency" we as humans spend every day and later on in life, it's the most precious thing to us (as we realize our time is running out.)
Playing games is meant to be fun, when players find ways to "wintrade" or "optimize coin farming" it sets the game's presence in the world.
Am I saying people aren't allowed to be effecient? No, of course not. But perhaps Blizzard is tired of trying to cater to all types of gamers. They are known for being fairly "casual" these days in all of their IP's and they way they've progressed them, and honestly I feel like maybe this is a direction that they are leaning into. If it scares off the streamers, hardcore players to other games, I don't think it's the worst thing in the world because the one thing that I find a worse problem than players optimizing the fun out of games is people who believe that every game should cater to every person's whim.
Games are designed with target audiences in mind. I don't play sports games (Madden, NBA, etc) because I find them dull, reptitive, and not really into sports. I also like shooter games, but not Call of Duty type games. Does this mean I need to go bitch on reddit/forums about how those games to cater to me or try to include me? No. I realize what I like and I dislike.
Anyhow point is: Gamers can (and have) twisted the market place of games into a different space. It's up to developers to make sure that their own vision for the game doesn't get swept under the bed by the clamoring of mass players demanding games cater to their every specific need.
I disagree with the articles summation that locking duels hero powers (based on collection thresholds) was a bad idea. There's nothing wrong with a mode that encourages you to widen your collection. The only reason I state this is because of this:
If you're new, you aren't expected to have a full collection right away...unless of course you buy packs. If you're "free2play' then you're gonna have to grind, for quite some time. I just honestly don't understand this dichotic mindset of "Sure, I'm a new player, but I need to unlock everything NOW otherwise this game is bad!". Uh no it's not. You don't unlock all the best gear in Diablo 2 within 2 hours. You don't complete Final Fantasy games immediately with perfect stats and 9999's within the first hour. So why do people expect to be able to "finish" a CCG if they don't unlock the entire collection of cards within a few months?
The second issue? "open, dust, create meta deck, dust, rinse and repeat". And what I mean by that, is that I've seen new players encouraged by others to "dust classes/decks/cards you don't play" in order to play meta decks they do want to play. And from an initial standpoint this seems like fine advice. And then time and time again I see threads of "I don't have enough dust to play X deck, what should I do?". And to be honest, it seems silly that people constantly dust their collection. It's extremely inefficient and anyone who dusts cards (besides nerfs) for the sake of making other meta decks beyond the first month of them playing Hearthstone is being foolish.
My 2 cents about the whole premise of unlocking things by increasing your collection.
It's a matter of "Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game". Doesn't matter if it's Hearthstone, Civilization, or Hello Kitty Island Adventure...
Blizzard: How would you guys like a new PvE casual mode with a slice of PvP in it?
Playerbase: *heavy breathing intensifies* Better crank up the grind-o-tron 3000 and no-life unlock everything in less than 2 weeks!
Fair enough and part of the reason I dedicated a whole week to playing the new mode. I just find it extremely shallow (even Heroics included). Yes they are more challenging I do agree. But at the end of the day most fights play out very "samey".
Look I wasn't expecting them to make a Hearthstone version of "Slay the Spire" (though that would have been fantastic if they did), but at the same time I didn't expect them to create an experience so devoid of any actual variation that Saviors of Ulduum Dungeon Runs, or Duels look complex by comparison. I know it's still early on, and we can expect it to evolve and change, but generally speaking people only give modes "one first impression" and then they have a sour taste forever more.
I'm out of the loop on competitive meta decks (or how to build them) in LOR. I mainly play expeditions and silver (meme decks in LOR. How would you go about creating a Targon/Demacia with Leona as the archetype post balance adjustments?
I won't go into a ton of details right now. But ultimately I feel like Mercenaries is a failed (or rushed) mode. It was touted as this "pve" roguelite mode with a collecting aspect. Except as of right now there's no real reason to play it.
I enjoyed it for maybe the first week but it did get VERY boring VERY fast. I'm not saying the game needs to go "full cash p2w" mode, but in other similar games, the purpose for collecting and powering up your different "comps" (parties) is to take on a raid boss of sorts (aka, Raid Shadow Legends, Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes, etc). The reward? The raid boss usually drops some sort of "rare" shard (aka coin) for a unique hero. This unique hero is usually overpowered as hell.
Sorry, I could go on and compare this to others but I'll cut this rant short and say this:
If it's trying to do a collection of pokemon style heroes: it failed because pokemon allows more customization in how you train your pokemen through HM's, TM's, and stats.
If it's trying to do a roguelike mode, it failed hard there because the levels have EXTREMLY little variation on how they play out. Every fight is the same, and there's no rogue-lite aspect at all (no gathering of multiple treasures to take down a super hard boss, in fact I'd argue that you could easily take down the "boss" of each area without any treasures whatsoever)
If it's trying to do a gacha style game (as I mentioned above like RSL or SWGOH) then it failed there as well because 1) the pay model doesn't support it, and 2) the game doesn't currently have any "raid" bosses or any extremely hard objectives.
And lastly, if it is trying to do pvp content, we have much better pvp modes such as BG's, duels, arenas, and traditional HS available as is.
I don't normally say these things about Blizzard or Hearthstone, but I feel like this was a situation of "Trying to please everyone, and ending up pleasing no-one" situation. (aka "The Hollywood Method")
Yes, because often times starting stats (i.e. base stats) of a minion are during pivotal turns where that breakpoint of attack or health can make a difference. And that breakpoint creates a snowball effect (not necessarily for you either). Also in the case of Holy mecheral, it gains divine shield when a condition is fufilled. Thus people often treat divine shield as effectively "doubling" a minion's attack. (so that minion was dealing 16 damage out with baseline stats under semi-optimal conditions. Now it will only be dealing 12 damage out under the same circumstances.)
Behold the Sun's holy light!
Looks like Targon/Leona is back on the menu boys! (and girls)
(One of my favorite champs if you can't tell, along with Malphite.)
I will say this much though: I'm surprised Pokey Stick didn't get nerfed though.
Hmm. So I guess this means Hearthstone is starting to do cross-IP stuff now. (even though I'm fairly certain they stated at some point in the past that they would not do that).
Not that I'm complaining, I just wonder if this means we'll see other cross IP characters in the future (i.e. Kerrigan, Jim Raynor, Tyrael, etc etc)
How do you know they were bots?
Also, a way they could improve the difficulty of the mode is create "raid" encounters. (unless those exist in some fashion in blackrock mountain, I don't know, I haven't gotten there yet)
Raid encounters would require very specific team setups but would have great or rare rewards. If we are comparing apples to apples, or in this case "gachas to gachas". To cite another source: Galaxy of Heroes. Their raid encounters gave you "rare" shards. (aka coins for Hearthstone) . The raid had a 3 day cooldown or whatever if you successfully completed it, so you couldn't just farm it all the time. But the point was to gain access to newer (aka more powerful) characters to use in PvP modes.
I'm not sure I exactly want to see that. (We don't want PvP being dictated by whomever has the most money or whatever like Galaxy of Heroes essentially did), but the point is they could add alternative fun things that improve the replayability.
My other gripe is that for a "rogue-lite" game, it is missing some integral mechanics.
1) Maps are way too short, bosses are stupid easy as someone who pre ordered Diablo and TLK.
2) There are no "event" hubs on the map. Maybe this changes or Ive just been unlocky but so far the "mysterious event" has always been a stranger (that gives you tasks that help you unlock equipment), or an exploding potato (Which IMO is a double edged event, and seems dumb). Events give you a chance to gain power spikes or power losses (i.e. in other rogue lite games, they can give you equipment, powers, stats, etc) or if you fail the event, they can make it harder on you. It seems Blizz decided to go extremely simple in this area and remove events altogether because they feared the backlash of "negative events". However without risk/reward in the map, it becomes a simple repetitive game mode that doesn't draw you in.
3) The Spirit Healer "event" like other roguelikes, should provide you alternatives to just reviving a single member. If you choose a path with a spirit healer on it, and you have no dead members, it does nothing for you. In other rogue games, if you come across "rest" areas and don't actually need to reset, they usually provide you with an option to improve your plan, improve your party, etc.
Overall the game mode isn't "bad" but it's not as great as I thought it would be. I fear that it will become another Duels mode (popular for a week or two and then really only played by a few hardcore people)
I don't care for the BG's skins, but that Gala Medivh bartender? I kinda want....
Is there some way you could modify the database tags so you could reference them without using unique ID's (which I'm assuming is a value in the table that is foolproof to call upon), while most people use the "name" field without issue, obviously with duplicate names (as you mentioned Alexstraza) that becomes a problem.
Are there plans to have an alias database tag, so you could for example say card=MercAlexstraza1 (Merc Mode, Alexstraza, 1st skin) Just a thought... :)
To be fair, most applications have some form of a memory leak in some fashion. (The longer they run, the memory they use up due to logging, caching, etc) There's very few that can "indefinitely" run without the device/server being taken down for maintenance. Even "always on" applications/web services usually do a load balance from a primary site to a failover periodically without any end-users being none the wiser.
Is it great that the memory leak is enough of a problem for them to announce it ahead of time? No of course not. But at least they are acknowledging it. Feels like your comment is the quintessential response to the mindset "damned if you do, damned if you don't".
If they didn't announce it, people would be up in arms. They announced it, people (i.e. you) are still upset. I'm so glad I'm not in game development 'cause all developers have to deal with entitled customers but I'll tell ya, gamers are the next level of entitled most of the time. I wouldn't wish angry entitled gamers on my worst enemy.
Kind of an odd take to be honest. Almost All software launches with bugs. They are either known (and not announced) or unknown, and later backlogged to fix.
I actually agree with a lot of what you said. I didn't realize it at first, but you're right. Why are we punished for managing healers properly? The run should just "end" if you die, not go "ok you revived, j/k!" and reduce your score. Battles do feel random. I don't necessarily mind the randomness of the cards offered though. (I think it helps people realize different unique combos that they wouldn't experiment with otherwise) and it does allow more than 2 regions (which is fun to have like 4 different champions and regions working together).
But you do bring up valid points!