Magic: The Combattening - Hearthstone

[Merusk]

So, there's no uncommons in this game.

I just realized it. Packs have 1 Rare, which is actually uncommon. Epics are Rare. Legendaries are mythic, except their distribution is 1 in 100 instead of 1 in 8.

Without an internal economy, it's just going to be crap deck on top of crap deck. a ton of money flowing in from people who don't know any better.

Every complaint you've got so far, I see a "$" attached to. That's not good.

[schild]

It is very much more $ based than even Magic due to no trading.

[Ginaz]

Just nuked like 80% of my cards to craft Archmage Leonidas, who is just plain bonkers. I gave Blizzard $50 of my American dollars (so full disclosure there). Anyway, uh

I didn't get it.

Not the best of situations in a beta where they take money.

I paid $10 and lucked out and got the archmage.

[schild]

The amount of money they're leaving on the table is absurd. I would rather have paid $50, gotten like 50,000 bullshitfarmvilledust and built my own deck.

[MrHat]

The amount of money they're leaving on the table is absurd. I would rather have paid $50, gotten like 50,000 bullshitfarmvilledust and built my own deck.

God Schild, it's a BETA, you can't judge the product on what's in the BETA.

 

But seriously, I completely get what you're saying here and would also much rather drop $30 and build my own than $2 fifteen times for a chance at something good.

Quick question: don't you just disenchant the stuff you don't like and then build what you want?

[schild]

Yes, but it takes 4 legendaries deconstructed to make 1 legendary. It takes 8 commons to make a common. The exchange rate is absurd. I thought it was static, it's not. It's shit.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Do we know what the scaling rewards list is for arena play yet?

[schild]

I know what it is for 4 wins. Glitterdustx3, 5-15 gold, and a pack. /shrug

[luckton]

Yeah, if you could get some keys to give out, that'd be great.

/Lumbergh

[Draegan]

Why the hell would you drop a $50 on this? Why?

[schild]

Well it was from selling some Magic cards, which I consider play money. Also, the only game related purchases I've made this year were like $20 in stuff on Steam and Hex. So, kind of whatever. Oh, and I didn't buy so much as a single pack or card from M14 (because LOLLLLL why would I)

[schild]

There are a million reasons the Arena mode in Hearthstone basically blows. There's one reason it's good "deckbuilding is fun." Unfortunately, it doesn't even scratch the same itch as 7 Kingdoms (the board game).

I am so torn on this game. It feels like they want to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Just like, too many bad gamers making it or something, I don't know.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Really sounds more like they are trying to be super careful.  I don't doubt they could give it a lot more depth but to me it seems like they realllllly want to make sure it's casual friendly, to a fault.

[schild]

Alas, CCGs are, by nature, "not casual."

[Rendakor]

So were MMOs until WoW.

[schild]

So were MMOs until WoW.

Sorry, but you think WoW somehow changed that? As far as I can tell, even the casual players became too hardcore to be called casual.

WoW's change was accessibility.

[Rendakor]

I thought casual and accessibility went hand in hand.

[schild]

haha wut

No.

[K9]

Blizzard is in the business of making gateway drug games

[Dahlrek]

There are a million reasons the Arena mode in Hearthstone basically blows.

I'm curious to hear those reasons. From where I sit it's pretty amazing, at least in terms of some things that are important to me. I'm thoroughly unimpressed with the actual card game itself, but Arena format seems great.

- It's cheap: Rather than three packs + a sub-pack fee (draft) or whatever they do for sealed these days, it's one pack + a sub-pack fee. For that price, you get 3-11 games, plus at least a pack and junk as a reward. That seems pretty comparable to drafting, except the buy-in is lower. I'll grant that the packs are a third of the size, so in terms of card gain I suppose it's just as expensive, but I feel that's more a problem with the size of packs.

- It's an interesting pseudo-draft deck-building process: I don't think this is a particularly compelling point, but I like that it's not just sealed, and I also like that I'm not actually drafting against anyone, so I can take as much time as I want and focus on making a good deck, and can ignore signalling, hate drafting and the other intricacies of real drafts in a shared card pool against your future opponents. For some people those features of drafting are actually very fun, so I can imagine this sealed variant isn't what they're looking for, but I like it.

- You don't keep the cards: Sorta dovetails from the prior point, but since you don't keep the cards (you see 18 packs worth of cards, and use 6 packs worth for the deck, no way they could let you keep them and keep it cheap), you don't need to think about rare drafting. The only decision to make is "what is best for my deck".

- The time commitment is minimal: This is the clincher. Single-game matches, played whenever you feel like it. For me this is so, so many orders of magnitude better than blocking out 3+ hours of my life for a draft or sealed tournament. At no point do I need to worry about investing more than 15 minutes. And if something does come up such that I absolutely have to quit immediately, it's a single loss, not dropping out of the draft/tournament entirely.

So: cheap, interesting, focused on deck building, and on my own schedule.

Now, I'm 110% gung-ho for Hex, so when I heard Blizzard was making a F2P online CCG, my first thought was "Shiiiiiit". Then I played constructed against AI and players, and I was no longer concerned. Then I played Arena, and I was back to "Shiiiiit". I really hope a format like this (low price per game, laser focus on limited deck building, and low time commitment) will exist in Hex, but I'm not aware of them planning one.

What about it do you dislike so much?

[Ingmar]

Got into this, and the game is relatively interesting mechanically compared to the other CCGs available online pre-Hex, Magic Online notwithstanding. Card aqcuisition is obnoxious, though, the lack of trading is a huge black mark against this game. There are evident balance problems with the game as well, but that's to be expected from a first stab at a CCG. I think in particular going second is a little too good right now.

[schild]

The stuff you get for going second is because people going first were winning too much.

They don't know how to make a CCG :( or balance one :(

[Ingmar]

The first tweak that comes to mind is that The Coin should not count as playing a card, so you can't trigger combo off of it on turn 1. That right there might be enough to tone it down. I kind of feel like mulligans should be all or nothing too, or at least be done before the extra card.

[schild]

The first tweak that comes to mind is that The Coin should not count as playing a card, so you can't trigger combo off of it on turn 1. That right there might be enough to tone it down. I kind of feel like mulligans should be all or nothing too, or at least be done before the extra card.

Yup and yup.

[luckton]

They must be making progress; they're going to be performing a full account wipe "soon" to coincide with a new patch.

[luckton]

Well shit...as I'm sitting here waiting for my Hex invite, I just got a Hearthstone invite.

Bliz trying to make a push or something?

[schild]

It's funny because I just got another key in the mail (for Hearthstone).

[Rendakor]

Well if you're not using it, hook me up? Need smoething to do tonight instead of F5ing my inbox.

[K9]

I'd welcome a Hearthstone key if anyone has a spare one too that they don't want.

[schild]

NO, YOU CAN ALL WAIT (because I only have 1 key and frankly that's not enough to go around)

[jakonovski]

I wish I had a key, but it's going to take ages until this thing reaches Europe. Also the game seems simplistic enough that it'll probably be old and tired by the time it goes public. Which seems a likely consequence for many of these early beta shenanigans devs like to do.

[luckton]

Also the game seems simplistic enough that it'll probably be old and tired by the time it goes public. Which seems a likely consequence for many of these early beta shenanigans devs like to do.

This has been my initial impression.  There's strategy here, sure, but it's about as deep as a kiddie pool.  Would have much preferred a straight copy/paste of the actual WoW TCG.

[Simond]

Blizzard taking something for hardcore nerds, streamlining it, making it more accessible and polishing it to a mirror finish?
But that never works!

[Ingmar]

That's not actually what has happened here. Luckton is overstating the lack of depth though - it's much better in that department than SolForge, for example. There's way too much failure in the quality of life stuff - chat, collection management, etc., - to call this polished to a mirror sheen.

[schild]

There's no mirror finish here. They shouldn't be dicking around with the window dressing so much.