Magic: The Combattening - Hearthstone

[schild]

IT'S A SKILL GAME, LAKOV, GAWD.

[Paelos]

You can't help yourself, can you? 

[schild]

Nope.

[koro]

Haven't played in a few days, but I built a decent starter Rogue deck and did my first actual Play game against another human. I get a Shaman.

Things go well, I try to keep pressure on him as best I can, but I keep drawing my high-mana cards early on, which allows him to get and keep a healing totem out, but I manage to mostly clear his board. At about turn ten or so, I'm at 25 life and he's about the same. I have a couple minions out, and he's just got the healing totem and four cards in his hand.

He calls a totem, gets the +2 attack to adjacent minions one.

Then he pulls out fucking Ysera and plops her down next to the totem to bring her to 8/12. I could throw my board at her and not kill her, so I go for his face and hope to get something to kill Ysera next turn.

His next turn, he pulls out a card that buffs Ysera by +5/+5, then drops a Windfury buff on her, and takes me from 25 to dead in a single move.

Welp!

[Tannhauser]

Welp indeed!

I played my Mage against a Priest deck last night.  The Priest deck was full of Mind Control and other judo cards like that where he copied my cards, etc.  It was a gimmick deck though, and I slowly choked him out with my superior board control.

Haven't tried Arena; I like knowing what cards are in my deck and their purpose.

[Venkman]

This sounds like every description of every Magic encounter ever, except that the descriptions are shorter because the game is less complex

[Ironwood]

Yeah, it's basically Magic for Children.

Elena loves it.

[Simond]

Handy arena card ranking spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AifXEOqTcGcLdFVvWk1GRjVJTHJUaTVLcGViR1RRTFE&gid=7

[Job601]

It's Magic with 25% of the complexity but 90% of the fun.  Oh, and there's no $500 barrier to entry.

[Paelos]

This thing is going to make them hundreds of millions. I have no doubt now that I've seen it in action.

[schild]

It's Magic with 25% of the complexity but 90% of the fun.  Oh, and there's no $500 barrier to entry.

90% of the fun lol ok

Edit: I should elaborate. 10% of the fun I'd agree with. But the "fun" of deckbuilding isn't there because the card pool isn't even a little deep. The "fun" of competition isn't really there because you play a single game, no sideboard, no match. The "fun" of the economy and collecting aspect is completely lost on this game. The "fun" of doing things besides turning dudes sideways isn't there. The "fun" of tournaments isn't there because you can't fucking communicate with people. Good news for Blizzard though, 10% the fun of Magic is more than most companies ever achieve.

[Paelos]

You're not wrong about your assessment of the game. It just doesn't matter.

The market is there for this kind of simplified version.

[Rasix]

Yah, it'll kill. It already has pretty impressive streaming numbers. I just wonder if it lacks stickiness in its current form.

Not being able to communicate is a plus, IMO. I'd rather not be berated by some barely litterate teen.

[schild]

You're not wrong about your assessment of the game. It just doesn't matter.

The market is there for this kind of simplified version.

I never ever claimed it wasn't.

[Paelos]

I never ever claimed it wasn't.

That's fine, since we all agree it's going to be a smashing success, I don't think assessing the actual gameplay has much value other than questioning stickiness as Rasix pointed out.

[Malakili]

I never ever claimed it wasn't.

That's fine, since we all agree it's going to be a smashing success, I don't think assessing the actual gameplay has much value other than questioning stickiness as Rasix pointed out.

How does this make any sense at all?  We can't say "McDonald's sells shitty food" because it's popular?  There's a market for it doesn't have anything to do with its quality.  At least most of the people who eat McDonald's know it's shitty and do not argue that it's an exceptional restaurant.  A few people were making that argument about Hearthstone.

[schild]

I prefer calling The Titanic out in situations like this because it is a piece of shit movie from top to bottom, but ya know, McDonald's works too. Maybe even better since at least their french fries are delicious. But a man cannot live on french fries or mediocre combat phases alone.

[Paelos]

How does this make any sense at all?  We can't say "McDonald's sells shitty food" because it's popular?  There's a market for it doesn't have anything to do with its quality.  At least most of the people who eat McDonald's know it's shitty and do not argue that it's an exceptional restaurant.  A few people were making that argument about Hearthstone.

In either case it's usually laden with jealousy that what's "good" to some isn't popular. When it comes to food and entertainment, these arguments are subjective since not everyone wants complexity of flavor or entertainment. It happens often on this site.

At some point, and I've been guilty of this as well, you've made your point. We get it. It makes you look petty if you continue to rehash the same thing over and over in a game that we can agree will financially blow other games you like out of the water.

[Mosesandstick]

Tried this, had a bit of fun. The grind seems ridiculous, how do you try out different decks without the cards?

[schild]

You don't. You spend money or grind.

[Venkman]

How does this make any sense at all?  We can't say "McDonald's sells shitty food" because it's popular?  There's a market for it doesn't have anything to do with its quality.  At least most of the people who eat McDonald's know it's shitty and do not argue that it's an exceptional restaurant.  A few people were making that argument about Hearthstone.

In either case it's usually laden with jealousy that what's "good" to some isn't popular.
...
It makes you look petty if you continue to rehash the same thing over and over in a game that we can agree will financially blow other games you like out of the water.

I agree with the first part, though I don't think people here are critiquing HS because they're butthurt a CCG wasn't for them. Instead I only see a lot of good analysis of the fundamentals of the game itself.

Whether HS is "good" or not is completely market dependent. We know that. But there's some universal elements of the game system that are weak or missing which will impact its success even in that market. I haven't play it to anywhere near the length of time of many of you, but the stickiness problem is easily noticable right away.

It's not enough to attract a lot of people. It already has. But you're only going to monetize a subset of them, and without some of the systems that have been proven to keep people interested (like those schild described a few posts back), you're going to lose the sheep that subset needs to have the feeling of their own relative value, and from which comes the kind of competitors that the subset continually buys deeper into a system to keep up with.

Granted, I don't think their operating costs are going to be very high for this game, especially compared to their other titles. And maybe this is the junior version of something players graduate to rather than being the thing they hope to be the success itself.

[Job601]

I still think you guys are massively underrating the depth of decision-making in this game.  The times when there's a clear right choice are very few, and intuitions about what your opponent might have or might do are very relevant to your decisions about what to play when and how to attack.  This is just not a shitty game -- it's a game that takes the most interesting and fun part of MTG and gives you tons of it for free.  I'm not arguing that it's perfect or to everyone's taste, but I do think it's genuinely a very good game and that simplicity has enormous benefits even to experienced players and surprisingly low costs to the overall experience.  Schild reminds me of all the haters whining about how Magic has become focused on creature combat at the expense of Counterspell at two mana.

By the way, as people said above, the real game is arena, and you're only supposed to play constructed to finish quests or earn gold for arena (which also gets you constructed cards.)  If you do well enough in arena you can go infinite and never have to play constructed when you don't want to.  If you think playing Arena is grinding, then this game is not for you.

[Malakili]

it's a game that takes the most interesting and fun part of MTG

This is the fundamental difference of opinion.

[Ironwood]

I'd say the most accessible part, which is where you get the money and get them hooked.

See all that shite Schild talks about ?  Most people don't give a fuck about that.

[Simond]

You don't. You spend money or grind.

Alternate, less useless, suggestion: Play arena. As long as you get to 3-4 wins per run, it works out the same as just buying packs and the better you do the more you get.
And, you know, at least you're playing the game that way.

[MrHat]

Woo.

Just went 9-3 as a Paladin in Arena.  Had a bunch of small dudes combined with blessings.  If they leave 1-2 guys on the board, the paladin can just buff them up way way too high.

[Paelos]

See all that shite Schild talks about ?  Most people don't give a fuck about that.

Exactly.

[Rasix]

Holy shit.  Some legendary cards are beyond bullshit.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Step 1:get ragnaros
step 2:win

[Ironwood]

Oooo - Link me that one ?

 

[Tebonas]

http://hydra-media.cursecdn.com/hearthstone.gamepedia.com/8/82/Ragnaros_the_Firelord%28503%29_Gold.png

[Paelos]

Holy shit.  Some legendary cards are beyond bullshit.

Yeah you can tell by turn 3 when you are facing a paying player. And you can get ready to bend over.

[Rasix]

Handy arena card ranking spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AifXEOqTcGcLdFVvWk1GRjVJTHJUaTVLcGViR1RRTFE&gid=7

Thanks for this.  Having a better run with some of those suggestions.  Still managed not to draw a single Consecrate for my Paladin run, which is problematic.

[MrHat]

Handy arena card ranking spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AifXEOqTcGcLdFVvWk1GRjVJTHJUaTVLcGViR1RRTFE&gid=7

Thanks for this.  Having a better run with some of those suggestions.  Still managed not to draw a single Consecrate for my Paladin run, which is problematic.

Same, I've been consistently going 4-7 wins.

Except when, like you said, you get zero board clear spells as Paladin or Mage.

[Paelos]

Yep, that list is very helpful. I crafted a mage deck that isn't ass now.