Hearthstone

[Excidium]

The game is OK so far. What puts it far ahead of DoC is that creatures are much more complex - more comes into play abilities, more fancy static abilities, warcries, whatnot.

So far I've had the most success with hunter, but then I have had the game for half a day so . I run with the beast-theme of the hunter and win on big dudes, usually ending it with an 8/8 warlord (the thing that gets +1+1 for each friendly creature when he comes into play).

With the current toolset, I pretty much always end up with some version of a weenie deck. I assume this is how it has to be early?

They are effective with basic cards for the hunter. Unleash the Hounds OP.

I have a hunter deck where the most expensive cards are 4 mana, makes for some funny victories.

 

[Zeriel]

By not limiting the number of similar cards to two like in normal games, by not limiting the number of legendaries one can get. Just read their Arena subforum, there are lots of people saying the same.
I may not be the best player but it is impossible so many people to be delusional about this. My wins in constructed deck are a proof of this, injustice as I mentioned.

Frankly I haven't played many arenas but it never looked like an issue with me. I wouldn't mind better drafting though.

but the biggest problem with Hearthstone is the monetization. It strangles the rest of the game.

How's it any worse than DoC in that respect? I stopped playing precisely because of the monetization.

DoC is generous with its rewards. You can easily compete without having to pay. Hearthstone is stingy. This wouldn't be such a big problem if it weren't stingy about the entire point of playing the game in the first place. The competitive part of the game is Arena--which requires an entry fee that is disproportionately large. There's basically only two outcomes: you either pay lots of real money to play arena, or you win every single arena you ever play, and use the gold from winning to enter the arena again. It is "doable" if you happen to be in the top 1%, but most people will just get raped by the odds. The whole thing is transparently greedy, and just sad. I can't imagine similar mechanics in other Blizzard games.

A good analogy: imagine if in SC2 you could only play at master league a number of times equal to your previous wins, and any games after that would cost 1.50$. That's Hearthstone, literally.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

6-2 with a warrior arena run. My key is almost fully erect. TONIGHT'S THE NIGHT. I FEEL IT BROS.

Edit: 6-3 crushing defeat against another warrior. Oh well. On the bright side I got lucky with my prize, got like 110 gold with my booster.

 

[Excidium]

DoC is generous with its rewards. You can easily compete without having to pay. Hearthstone is stingy. This wouldn't be such a big problem if it weren't stingy about the entire point of playing the game in the first place. The competitive part of the game is Arena--which requires an entry fee that is disproportionately large. There's basically only two outcomes: you either pay lots of real money to play arena, or you win every single arena you ever play, and use the gold from winning to enter the arena again. It is "doable" if you happen to be in the top 1%, but most people will just get raped by the odds. The whole thing is transparently greedy, and just sad. I can't imagine similar mechanics in other Blizzard games.

A good analogy: imagine if in SC2 you could only play at master league a number of times equal to your previous wins, and any games after that would cost 1.50$. That's Hearthstone, literally.

Wouldn't play this or any other f2p card game competitively. My opinion is from a casual point of view, and in that respect I find it more fun. At the very least I have all heroes available from the start to vary a bit. I feel less inclined to pay on HS than on DoC where playing default haven deck against necros every other match was just not fun.

 

[Damned Registrations]

The game is OK so far. What puts it far ahead of DoC is that creatures are much more complex - more comes into play abilities, more fancy static abilities, warcries, whatnot.

So far I've had the most success with hunter, but then I have had the game for half a day so . I run with the beast-theme of the hunter and win on big dudes, usually ending it with an 8/8 warlord (the thing that gets +1+1 for each friendly creature when he comes into play).

With the current toolset, I pretty much always end up with some version of a weenie deck. I assume this is how it has to be early?

Most of the starter cards that are expensive are also shit (just like in MtG, you don't want to be dropping a vanilla creature for 6 mana that just gets killed for 3 the next turn without doing anything). However, you can go for a slightly different strategy if you want. Get some cheap control/stall cards (mages are best for this) and then put in a ton of 4/5 cost shit. If you mulligan well enough to have something to play for the first few turns, you can often end up overwhelming someone by simply dropping fatties each turn that require an immediate answer and often 2 for 1 exchanges until they just run out of removal.

Obviously neither approach works vs good decks, since a good deck will have early aggression, decent removal, and board clearing, so betting everything on a 'dump all my shit on the table ASAP' strategy is hopeless.

 

[Brother None]

This game looks fun. We got any idea how far it is from a more general beta (I'm signed up for beta on Blizzard but no luck so far).

 

[Excidium]

I don't understand why priests who have it so easy when it comes to trading minions because of all the heals and health gains also have such powerful removal cards.

This game looks fun. We got any idea how far it is from a more general beta (I'm signed up for beta on Blizzard but no luck so far).

There are some rumors that they are going to announce open beta at blizzcon.

 

[Zeriel]

Yeah, priests and mages are the godmode classes as it stands. Mage at least has the justification of "well if you can survive the 30 damage in one turn spells, and all their aoe, you sort of just win", but priest is pretty ridiculous in that they are good at all stages of the game. Even if you stall to the end, they'll just take all your 8-10 cost fatties and call it a day.

 

[DakaSha]

Fuck priests.

I think that is the only class i havent beat yet and would cal 'op' with my limited experience.

Having said that, I'm still REALLY enjoying this so far

 

[J1M]

The game is OK so far. What puts it far ahead of DoC is that creatures are much more complex - more comes into play abilities, more fancy static abilities, warcries, whatnot.

So far I've had the most success with hunter, but then I have had the game for half a day so . I run with the beast-theme of the hunter and win on big dudes, usually ending it with an 8/8 warlord (the thing that gets +1+1 for each friendly creature when he comes into play).

With the current toolset, I pretty much always end up with some version of a weenie deck. I assume this is how it has to be early?

Mages are generally the opposite. They rely on spells to stall until they can afford to drop (and protect via spells) larger creatures.

 

[J1M]

By not limiting the number of similar cards to two like in normal games, by not limiting the number of legendaries one can get. Just read their Arena subforum, there are lots of people saying the same.
I may not be the best player but it is impossible so many people to be delusional about this. My wins in constructed deck are a proof of this, injustice as I mentioned.

Frankly I haven't played many arenas but it never looked like an issue with me. I wouldn't mind better drafting though.

but the biggest problem with Hearthstone is the monetization. It strangles the rest of the game.

How's it any worse than DoC in that respect? I stopped playing precisely because of the monetization.

DoC is generous with its rewards. You can easily compete without having to pay. Hearthstone is stingy. This wouldn't be such a big problem if it weren't stingy about the entire point of playing the game in the first place. The competitive part of the game is Arena--which requires an entry fee that is disproportionately large. There's basically only two outcomes: you either pay lots of real money to play arena, or you win every single arena you ever play, and use the gold from winning to enter the arena again. It is "doable" if you happen to be in the top 1%, but most people will just get raped by the odds. The whole thing is transparently greedy, and just sad. I can't imagine similar mechanics in other Blizzard games.

A good analogy: imagine if in SC2 you could only play at master league a number of times equal to your previous wins, and any games after that would cost 1.50$. That's Hearthstone, literally.

DoC doesn't have a draft format of any kind. You cannot escape the clutches of pay to win.

Also, with daily quests and consolation rewards you can play arena every second day. Which also means you are getting a new pack of cards every second day.

Since the reset I have accumulated 40% of the expert cards in the game. Now, that will obviously slow down as 40% of the cards I get must be dusted, but those are some real-world figures for you from someone who didn't just start playing yesterday.

 

[Zeriel]

By not limiting the number of similar cards to two like in normal games, by not limiting the number of legendaries one can get. Just read their Arena subforum, there are lots of people saying the same.
I may not be the best player but it is impossible so many people to be delusional about this. My wins in constructed deck are a proof of this, injustice as I mentioned.

Frankly I haven't played many arenas but it never looked like an issue with me. I wouldn't mind better drafting though.

but the biggest problem with Hearthstone is the monetization. It strangles the rest of the game.

How's it any worse than DoC in that respect? I stopped playing precisely because of the monetization.

DoC is generous with its rewards. You can easily compete without having to pay. Hearthstone is stingy. This wouldn't be such a big problem if it weren't stingy about the entire point of playing the game in the first place. The competitive part of the game is Arena--which requires an entry fee that is disproportionately large. There's basically only two outcomes: you either pay lots of real money to play arena, or you win every single arena you ever play, and use the gold from winning to enter the arena again. It is "doable" if you happen to be in the top 1%, but most people will just get raped by the odds. The whole thing is transparently greedy, and just sad. I can't imagine similar mechanics in other Blizzard games.

A good analogy: imagine if in SC2 you could only play at master league a number of times equal to your previous wins, and any games after that would cost 1.50$. That's Hearthstone, literally.

DoC doesn't have a draft format of any kind. You cannot escape the clutches of pay to win.

Also, with daily quests and consolation rewards you can play arena every second day. Which also means you are getting a new pack of cards every second day.

Since the reset I have accumulated 40% of the expert cards in the game. Now, that will obviously slow down as 40% of the cards I get must be dusted, but those are some real-world figures for you from someone who didn't just start playing yesterday.

DoC isn't "pay to win" if you can compete without paying (like I did, easily). It's hilarious to me that people would make the argument that Hearthstone isn't pay to win when the competitive aspect of the game requires an entry fee that is balanced around gold payouts that require playing for 16 hours straight to grind out enough gold to play one arena. It's absurd.

It's fine if you don't mind that, but Hearthstone is still way, way more stingy than DoC ever was (and with the Altar of Wishes, there is very little reason to spend any money on DoC).

If arena's price point wasn't set intentionally to get the majority of people to cough up $ every day, I'd agree with you wholeheartedly.

 

[Zeriel]

Actually, in retrospect, maybe you're actually right. DoC is "pay to win" because while you can do just fine not paying, paying will get you minor short term advantages. Hearthstone isn't pay to win. It's pay to play, which is much, much worse. Blizzard has finally found a model that is even more moneygrubbing than subscription fees. (To be accurate, it's closer to the way WoW subscription fees work in China. Smaller fees, every hour/day.)

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

when the competitive aspect of the game requires an entry fee that is balanced around gold payouts that require playing for 16 hours straight to grind out enough gold to play one arena. It's absurd

wat. Daily quests in Hearthstone get you 40 to 100 gold each. Absolute worst case scenario where you have 0 gold from previous arena entries (5 wins get you a minimum of 50 gold and 7 gets you a minimum of 150), it would take you 3 days of dailies for an arena entry. Smallest 40 gold quests getting you to 120 gold, and 20 gold from 6 "Play" mode wins which you sure as hell would get over 3 days. 16 hours straight would be doing the "3 wins for 10 gold" thing and only a crazy person would try to farm 150 gold from that.

On top of this, they give you a good chunk of change right off the bat and your first entry into the arena is free. I'm sitting around 600 gold right now after two arena runs, leveling all the classes to 10 for the free cards, and a bunch of playing with my friend and I'm maybe at 16 hours over 3 days.

 

[Zeriel]

Daily quests give you 40 gold. They never give you 100. You are probably thinking one-time achievements. Which do give a lot (somewhere around 500-600 overall once you do most of them). But the gold income outside of those one-time things is clearly mathed out to require people to buy arena tickets unless a) they are better than 90% of players in the game or b) don't want to do arena very much. Considering arena is the one big draw of the game, I think that's rather silly. If you think that's completely fine, more power to you.

 

[1451]

But guys you can play four attack minions to counter priest removal spells

 

[Damned Registrations]

No you can't. Last time someone played Ysera on me I mind controlled it.

 

[J1M]

Daily quests give you 40 gold. They never give you 100. You are probably thinking one-time achievements. Which do give a lot (somewhere around 500-600 overall once you do most of them). But the gold income outside of those one-time things is clearly mathed out to require people to buy arena tickets unless a) they are better than 90% of players in the game or b) don't want to do arena very much. Considering arena is the one big draw of the game, I think that's rather silly. If you think that's completely fine, more power to you.

Yes, you have played for 2 days and are an expert. Nevermind that everyone who has been in beta for just a few days longer has seen a daily quest for 60 or 100 gold. If it wasn't clear above, I have only spent $4 on the game to get 40% of the cards. The main reason I spent any money at all was to get the bonus card.

If you don't like the game, that's fine, but most of what you are saying is simply false.

 

[Zeriel]

Daily quests give you 40 gold. They never give you 100. You are probably thinking one-time achievements. Which do give a lot (somewhere around 500-600 overall once you do most of them). But the gold income outside of those one-time things is clearly mathed out to require people to buy arena tickets unless a) they are better than 90% of players in the game or b) don't want to do arena very much. Considering arena is the one big draw of the game, I think that's rather silly. If you think that's completely fine, more power to you.

Yes, you have played for 2 days and are an expert. Nevermind that everyone who has been in beta for just a few days longer has seen a daily quest for 60 or 100 gold. If it wasn't clear above, I have only spent $4 on the game to get 40% of the cards. The main reason I spent any money at all was to get the bonus card.

If you don't like the game, that's fine, but most of what you are saying is simply false.

Huh, you're right. Just looked it up. Sorry! I still stand by the stance that charging 2$ (or its equivelant in time/gold) just to play the part of the game everyone wants to play is pretty silly. Arena mode is the only thing that makes Hearthstone appealing to the online TCG crowd (i.e, what it does that other, more established online TCGs don't), and you could easily go through 40$ a day if all you played was arena. Sure, you don't have to, but my guess is people would like to. They just don't because the price is so ridiculously high.

 

[J1M]

Daily quests give you 40 gold. They never give you 100. You are probably thinking one-time achievements. Which do give a lot (somewhere around 500-600 overall once you do most of them). But the gold income outside of those one-time things is clearly mathed out to require people to buy arena tickets unless a) they are better than 90% of players in the game or b) don't want to do arena very much. Considering arena is the one big draw of the game, I think that's rather silly. If you think that's completely fine, more power to you.

Yes, you have played for 2 days and are an expert. Nevermind that everyone who has been in beta for just a few days longer has seen a daily quest for 60 or 100 gold. If it wasn't clear above, I have only spent $4 on the game to get 40% of the cards. The main reason I spent any money at all was to get the bonus card.

If you don't like the game, that's fine, but most of what you are saying is simply false.

Huh, you're right. Just looked it up. Sorry! I still stand by the stance that charging 2$ (or its equivelant in time/gold) just to play the part of the game everyone wants to play is pretty silly.

Sure, I'd rather pay $20 and unlock the whole game too. But sadly enough people fall for "free to play" games and spend hundreds of dollars on them that we are stuck with our current circumstances.

 

[Zeriel]

I'm totally okay with "let's take the money of people who love to spend it on shit". That's why constructed mode and buying booster packs exist. Paying for the privilege of playing a game mode, though... that's... I really don't like the precedence it sets. It would sound like a joke ("Pay 1.99$ an hour for the 'ACCESS THE GAME DLC'!") were it not reality.

 

[Damned Registrations]

You do realize that playing a sealed draft in MTG costs way more right? And you're even more fucked for trying to get a competitive deck in constructed since they roll out new sets constantly, including total bullshit like reprinting the same card with a different name so you need to buy it again, or rares like Chimney Imp, that exist solely to make other rares rarer by comparison.

If anything my gripe with arena is that it's too random. You can get a deck with no legendaries and few epics vs a deck with 4 holy novas and a ton of rares and epics. I get that they want it to be harder for people to go infinite in arena (if like 50% of people could do it it'd be pretty shit for them since half the player base just has infinite gold basically) but I'd prefer if it were more skill based and less 'lol we randomly fuck even the really good players'. Though between the basic card mechanics and the 3 game elimination, you're pretty safe as long as your deck and skills are solid, which is more than I can say for a MtG draft where you can just get wiped by mana screw right away.

 

[Zeriel]

Yep, sure, and drafting in MTG involves actual, physical objects you can touch and hold that have value and are tradeable. I'm not highly familiar with online MTG, but it's probably a massive rip-off, too. (Although I heard something about being able to have the company send you copies of cards you own online, which sounds amusing.)

I think what makes arena so complicated (and why the price is so high) is that they bundled the competitive side of their game (people want to play in an equal environment where no one, technically, has an obvious advantage) with the acquisition side (arena nets you a pack every time). If they hadn't done that, the price wouldn't need to be so high, or wouldn't need a price at all.

 

[J1M]

Yep, sure, and drafting in MTG involves actual, physical objects you can touch and hold that have value and are tradeable. I'm not highly familiar with online MTG, but it's probably a massive rip-off, too. (Although I heard something about being able to have the company send you copies of cards you own online, which sounds amusing.)

I think what makes arena so complicated (and why the price is so high) is that they bundled the competitive side of their game (people want to play in an equal environment where no one, technically, has an obvious advantage) with the acquisition side (arena nets you a pack every time). If they hadn't done that, the price wouldn't need to be so high, or wouldn't need a price at all.

Yes, but they have linked the two parts of the game together on purpose. They want cross-pollination to reduce fatigue and so that the people who do well in arena are still "losing" 100g each time in the form of buying a card pack. If they didn't have it set up this way, they would not be handing out so much gold for daily quests.

People get bored of their cards and play arena. They see a cool card in arena, and want to craft it in constructed. They get a new card from a pack after arena and add it to a deck. They head into play mode for a while. Repeat.

 

[Brotherman Bill]

I played in the arena and got 5 wins. I feel p good about it given that this is the second time I try. Got booster, 60 gold and some dust. How much should I value the dust at? Is there a general idea of how much?

Sadly the rare I got was doombringer. That's one shit card right there, tried it in the Arena and regretted getting him each time.

Also I tried playing some priest. It was effective but highly boring, hue I heal dis 1/3 creature for infinite card advantage.