It all feels planned: first triple the requirements for +20% XP, then bring it down to double (*) but still only give +20% XP. Make it sound like they caved in to community backlash while still significantly worsening the economy for many players.
In itself this wouldn't be enough to make me quit, but it's part of an overall trend to monetize ever more aggressively. Back when it was only cosmetic, I would roll my eyes and move on, but now it's starting to affect how much money it costs to build a decent collection. I'm not interested in playing more and I don't want to pay more for the amount of time that I am playing the game. It seems they're on a course to make the game too expensive for me and if I'll be forced to quit anyway in the not too distant future, I might as well quit now and save myself some frustration.
(*) They haven't announced the new requirements, just said that they will be between the old and the current amounts. I have a gut feeling it will be right in the middle, but that is just a guess at this point.
There is no way I can complete these in one week. With the old weekly quests I already didn't always manage to complete them before the week ended.
I'm seriously considering whether I should quit the game. I don't like the feeling of being squeezed for money. And there are plenty of other good games to play.
I guess I'll stop playing until they roll it back; ultimately the people responsible for monetization probably care more about seeing the numbers drop than about any other form of protest.
They wanted to reduce the power level of the deck a bit and I think it will do that: one extra turn is all that some combo decks might need. Personally, I don't think decks that do nothing but stall until they find their win condition are fun and interactive. However, it seems Team 5's goal was to lower the win rate a bit, not to force the deck to be redesigned or retired.
I think the fact that its benefit comes relatively late in the game was the main thing holding it back. That might still be the case at 5 mana, but if it was a 1-mana 1/1 with the same battlecry, I think it would see a lot of play.
For me it's an improvement as well, because I don't go out of my way to complete the achievements, which means it often takes a lot longer than one expansion cycle to complete them. However, for the achievement hunters there is now a lot less total dust to collect, so for them it's a negative.
Rarity and gold seem to matter, with gold mattering a whole lot more, even more than in actual Hearthstone's dust value. The total pack value might be some kind of multiplication rather than addition, because a lone golden legendary isn't enough to get a really high score, but in the company of some golden cards of lower rarities the point value skyrockets.
I don't know. I mostly face the non-highlander variant myself, but it's very frustrating to play against, since it's just turn after turn of you putting something on the board and them wiping it off the board. In the old days you could eventually run them out of removal, but that is very difficult with the amount of card draw of today combined with Odyn, Prime Designate as a single-card win condition (thus having fewer draws that are not removal).
While I don't miss the days when a turn 1 Mana Wyrm or a strong Murloc opener would snowball the game, we've now gone to the other extreme, where it's rare for a minion to survive a turn.
I'm not surprised that Sludge Warlock is getting hit: I've been playing my own list (mixed in some discard stuff) which is likely sub-optimal, but it still felt very powerful.
Somehow I barely run into Sludge Warlock on EU ladder; Control Warrior and Plague DK seem to be much more popular.
I'm not complaining about the cosmetics; I even said in my original post that I'm fine with it. But I do spot a trend of ever more items for purchase being added to the game and often at pretty high price levels, which makes me think they're under pressure to bring in more money. Especially as they're cutting costs at the same time, with layoffs and cancelling Duels.
It's a common misunderstanding that companies exist to make profit. Companies exist to provide goods and services. They have to make a profit to continue to exist, but that doesn't make it their purpose.
I'm not even a F2P player: I typically buy the Tavern Pass and a cheap bundle each season. However, those purchases always felt optional. I just really dislike being pressured into buying something. And with games like Diablo Immortal being straight up pay-to-win and games like Marvel Snap putting you permanently behind the meta if you don't pay, I don't think it's strange to be worried about the future of Hearthstone.
It wasn't possible to pre-order minisets in the past, but they could easily introduce that, as they already have the required infrastructure. I will admit they probably wouldn't do a 5-week release cycle for a miniset, so maybe 50% is not realistic, but if they run miniset pre-orders for two weeks, pre-order periods would end up spanning 40% of the year.
The point is, they seem to be increasingly desperate for more monetization: signature cards, the ridiculously expensive diamond cards and skins, adding skins to Heroic Brawl etc. While Corridor Sleeper is unlikely to break the meta, they have shown that there is no hard boundary preventing them from introducing paid exclusives that could have game play impact on Standard. I'm worried what this means for the future of the game.
They're exclusive for 5 weeks. If they do this for every expansion, that's 15 weeks per year, or about 30% of the time. If they'd do it for minisets as well, the exclusivity period could go up to or over 50%.
I'm not a fan of pre-order exclusive cards. It's fine with me if it's an exclusive cosmetic or a free card that can also be crafted, but if an exclusive card ever becomes meta-relevant, we'd be in a pay-to-win situation. I'm certainly not going to pre-order this time, because I don't want to reward this strategy.
If anyone wants to try Colifero the Artist, you can use this deck before the Clockwork Dealer brawl ends:
Something I dislike about Raid the Docks is that a single card negates the main weakness of a deck, in this case that aggro decks eventually run out of steam.
Odyn, Prime Designate has the same problem: normally, a control deck would either have to dedicate multiple card slots to a win condition or assemble a win condition from discovered cards, but this one card solves that weakness.
Similarly, Deathstalker Rexxar, while one of my favorite cards, was rightly criticized for giving any Hunter deck a decent late game for the minimal investment of a single card slot.
It all feels planned: first triple the requirements for +20% XP, then bring it down to double (*) but still only give +20% XP. Make it sound like they caved in to community backlash while still significantly worsening the economy for many players.
In itself this wouldn't be enough to make me quit, but it's part of an overall trend to monetize ever more aggressively. Back when it was only cosmetic, I would roll my eyes and move on, but now it's starting to affect how much money it costs to build a decent collection. I'm not interested in playing more and I don't want to pay more for the amount of time that I am playing the game. It seems they're on a course to make the game too expensive for me and if I'll be forced to quit anyway in the not too distant future, I might as well quit now and save myself some frustration.
(*) They haven't announced the new requirements, just said that they will be between the old and the current amounts. I have a gut feeling it will be right in the middle, but that is just a guess at this point.
There is no way I can complete these in one week. With the old weekly quests I already didn't always manage to complete them before the week ended.
I'm seriously considering whether I should quit the game. I don't like the feeling of being squeezed for money. And there are plenty of other good games to play.
I guess I'll stop playing until they roll it back; ultimately the people responsible for monetization probably care more about seeing the numbers drop than about any other form of protest.
New year, new deck:
Unstable Evolution on the Charge side is very nice, since every transformed minion gets to attack immediately.
They wanted to reduce the power level of the deck a bit and I think it will do that: one extra turn is all that some combo decks might need. Personally, I don't think decks that do nothing but stall until they find their win condition are fun and interactive. However, it seems Team 5's goal was to lower the win rate a bit, not to force the deck to be redesigned or retired.
I think the fact that its benefit comes relatively late in the game was the main thing holding it back. That might still be the case at 5 mana, but if it was a 1-mana 1/1 with the same battlecry, I think it would see a lot of play.
Congrats to the winners.
My favorite is Lolo from Eggerland Mystery / Adventures of Lolo:
For me it's an improvement as well, because I don't go out of my way to complete the achievements, which means it often takes a lot longer than one expansion cycle to complete them. However, for the achievement hunters there is now a lot less total dust to collect, so for them it's a negative.
Rarity and gold seem to matter, with gold mattering a whole lot more, even more than in actual Hearthstone's dust value. The total pack value might be some kind of multiplication rather than addition, because a lone golden legendary isn't enough to get a really high score, but in the company of some golden cards of lower rarities the point value skyrockets.
In particular I stopped playing highlander decks, because Helya on turn 4 means your highlander cards are never going to be active.
I don't know. I mostly face the non-highlander variant myself, but it's very frustrating to play against, since it's just turn after turn of you putting something on the board and them wiping it off the board. In the old days you could eventually run them out of removal, but that is very difficult with the amount of card draw of today combined with Odyn, Prime Designate as a single-card win condition (thus having fewer draws that are not removal).
While I don't miss the days when a turn 1 Mana Wyrm or a strong Murloc opener would snowball the game, we've now gone to the other extreme, where it's rare for a minion to survive a turn.
So the Standard nerfs will be:
I'm not surprised that Sludge Warlock is getting hit: I've been playing my own list (mixed in some discard stuff) which is likely sub-optimal, but it still felt very powerful.
Somehow I barely run into Sludge Warlock on EU ladder; Control Warrior and Plague DK seem to be much more popular.
I'm not complaining about the cosmetics; I even said in my original post that I'm fine with it. But I do spot a trend of ever more items for purchase being added to the game and often at pretty high price levels, which makes me think they're under pressure to bring in more money. Especially as they're cutting costs at the same time, with layoffs and cancelling Duels.
It's a common misunderstanding that companies exist to make profit. Companies exist to provide goods and services. They have to make a profit to continue to exist, but that doesn't make it their purpose.
I'm not even a F2P player: I typically buy the Tavern Pass and a cheap bundle each season. However, those purchases always felt optional. I just really dislike being pressured into buying something. And with games like Diablo Immortal being straight up pay-to-win and games like Marvel Snap putting you permanently behind the meta if you don't pay, I don't think it's strange to be worried about the future of Hearthstone.
It wasn't possible to pre-order minisets in the past, but they could easily introduce that, as they already have the required infrastructure. I will admit they probably wouldn't do a 5-week release cycle for a miniset, so maybe 50% is not realistic, but if they run miniset pre-orders for two weeks, pre-order periods would end up spanning 40% of the year.
The point is, they seem to be increasingly desperate for more monetization: signature cards, the ridiculously expensive diamond cards and skins, adding skins to Heroic Brawl etc. While Corridor Sleeper is unlikely to break the meta, they have shown that there is no hard boundary preventing them from introducing paid exclusives that could have game play impact on Standard. I'm worried what this means for the future of the game.
They're exclusive for 5 weeks. If they do this for every expansion, that's 15 weeks per year, or about 30% of the time. If they'd do it for minisets as well, the exclusivity period could go up to or over 50%.
Maybe another hidden puzzle? Labyrinth does sound like a fitting reward for people who like searching for secrets.
I'm not a fan of pre-order exclusive cards. It's fine with me if it's an exclusive cosmetic or a free card that can also be crafted, but if an exclusive card ever becomes meta-relevant, we'd be in a pay-to-win situation. I'm certainly not going to pre-order this time, because I don't want to reward this strategy.
If anyone wants to try Colifero the Artist, you can use this deck before the Clockwork Dealer brawl ends:
One of the soundtracks I like to listen to while doing work is Hollow Knight Piano Collections, which is available for example on Spotify.
Indie chiptunes: PPPPPP, the soundtrack of the game VVVVVV: Spotify. This should appeal to the people who like the Undertale soundtrack.
For some actual retro music, the rearranged versions of the Snatcher songs are quite nice:
Something I dislike about Raid the Docks is that a single card negates the main weakness of a deck, in this case that aggro decks eventually run out of steam.
Odyn, Prime Designate has the same problem: normally, a control deck would either have to dedicate multiple card slots to a win condition or assemble a win condition from discovered cards, but this one card solves that weakness.
Similarly, Deathstalker Rexxar, while one of my favorite cards, was rightly criticized for giving any Hunter deck a decent late game for the minimal investment of a single card slot.