Magic: The Combattening - Hearthstone

[Rokal]

For the record:

Fuck Murloc decks. Fuck murloc decks packed full of goddamn legendaries.  Especially at rank "I suck" on ranked list. How on earth is a guy with a themed freaking deck and legendaries ranked that low?  EVERY card he played was a murloc or a legendary. I spent my entire time squashing his multiple buffing murlocs.

I guess he just bought his way there. Too much for my "crappy Shaman who still doesn't have half his stupid Shaman cards".

Shaman doesn't seem to have a lot in terms of "clearing the field" either.

I'm playing ranked because casual still seems full of mis-labeled players.

You can pick up some good shaman removal via crafting for a reasonable amount of dust. Lightning Storm and Forked Lightning in particular can be really helpful.

Murloc decks are cheesy, but if you focus on keeping board control early they'll play out their hand and lose. They only really succeed when they manage they keep board control from the very beginning.

If you lose to one you can always console yourself by remembering that they probably spent $100+ to build their cheesy one-trick-pony deck.

[Job601]

I discovered by accident that you get the legendary Murloc for free if you acquire all the other murlocs.  Haven't gotten around to building a murloc deck yet.

[Ironwood]

You should all read the achievements.  There's a lot of gold to be had for pretty much doing fuck all.  And gold is Arena, is decks, is fun.

[Morat20]

You should all read the achievements.  There's a lot of gold to be had for pretty much doing fuck all.  And gold is Arena, is decks, is fun.

Strangely, you can't see what achievements you  have yet --- although i did get 100 gold yesterday for finally unlocking all the basic cards.

[Ironwood]

Yeah, you get a shitload for beating all the computer AI's (but who does that, right ?)

Trouble is, because it's all hidden, you have fuck all idea which one's you've done and which you haven't, so you have to plough through it all again.

[Rasix]

God, rank 20 game and some asshole has pretty much all gold cards and pulls out a Ragnaros on turn 8.   

[Morat20]

God, rank 20 game and some asshole has pretty much all gold cards and pulls out a Ragnaros on turn 8.   

I just went 3-2 in the Arena, but had the absolute fun of Mind Control teching two legendaries in both games I won.

Of the three games I lost, one was a total blowout against a Shaman. He had board control from the beginning and nothing I could do could stop him. The other two loses were fairly close, so not so horrible a shut-out. Never had board control for more than a turn in the last one, so it was still a pretty good beat-down.

Didn't have enough 2 point 2/3s or 3/2s to really hit the early game. And no flamestrikes, only one fireball, and I don't think I ever drew my legendary any of the five games. Wait, once -- as the initial draft so I tossed it. 7 points in hand is pointless at the beginning.

[Ironwood]

The random nature of this game is very strange at times.

Utterly shit deck, flew through 4-0.

Then the wife decides to sit and cheer me on and I get humped 4-3.

Got some nice stuff, but I lost to shit I shouldn't and won when I shouldn't too.

Crazy.

[Morat20]

I'm really fucking pissy with that damn priest inner fire bullshit.

Two games in a row against a priest and I see that stupid 1/3 cleric (you know, heal a minion, draw a card) manage to survive a round, then get the "double health" and then "make health equal to attack" card played on it.

It's turn four and I've got a 6/6 minion sitting there that I can't kill, and he happily uses it to pick off minions than heals. I'm playing a paladin. What have I got to do 6 damage? Nada. At least a mage could fireball it.

[Morat20]

I hit my first game-breaking bug. I drew flamestrike and it got "stuck" onto the next card drawn. ALWAYS the next card drawn. I couldn't cast it. I rather needed to -- in fact, quite sure I could have easily won the game, but I couldn't.

Even when I had it showing "flamestrike" I'd go to cast it and it'd be the other card in my hand.

Really sucked.

[Simond]

The random nature of this game is very strange at times.

Utterly shit deck, flew through 4-0.

Then the wife decides to sit and cheer me on and I get humped 4-3.

Got some nice stuff, but I lost to shit I shouldn't and won when I shouldn't too.

Crazy.

That's one of the reasons I want a replay system - I've had matches where I've lost where I could have won and seeing if it was just RNG messing with me or if I screwed up earlier in the game would be useful.

[Morat20]

I think there's something to the theory that a lot of the bad luck is multiple small, avoidable mistakes that add up over a game. From mistakes drafting to mistakes playing.

[cironian]

It's turn four and I've got a 6/6 minion sitting there that I can't kill, and he happily uses it to pick off minions than heals. I'm playing a paladin. What have I got to do 6 damage? Nada. At least a mage could fireball it.

At turn four Blessing of Might, Blessing of Kings are options. Or Equality. Or Humility to buy yourself some time. Sure, you might not have any of those on hand, but with that many options you can't say that Paladins are terribly suited for this kind of situation in general.

[Morat20]

Oh, I had options. Just, you know, not in my hand. :)  Or in some cases in my deck.

I'm beginning to see the real benefit of the 'draw a card' minions. Cult Master, when you get him rolling, is insane. So is whatever that 'take damage' guy is.

Also, knife juggler can be hilarious. :)

[Paelos]

I lost an arena game because on our second set of turns I pulled a mad bomber that tossed all 3 barrels at me. Then my opponents pulled out a mad bomber that sent all 3 barrels at me. He also had a unit sitting there as well, and my mad bomber.

I'm not sure what the odds of that are, but it just laughed as I knew I was totally fucked.

[schild]

The random nature of this game is very strange at times.

Utterly shit deck, flew through 4-0.

Then the wife decides to sit and cheer me on and I get humped 4-3.

Got some nice stuff, but I lost to shit I shouldn't and won when I shouldn't too.

Crazy.

The magic players here have been yelling about the randomness of this thing for 10 fucking pages.

What do you expect?

It's not a skillgame.

[Paelos]

We tuned you out nine pages ago. 

[schild]

Tuning me out doesn't magically change the design or implementation of said design. Though, that'd be neat if it did.

[Morat20]

I dunno, there's some skill there. I've been beating people because they make errors. The rankings have more people making dumb (ie, errors I can spot) ones, but even in Arena I've seen guys do things like trade badly (letting me go 2-1 instead of an even trade) or play cards in a bad order, that sort of thing.

I have come to love Priest, though. :) There's something hilarious about having 10 cards, all the time, and just instantly nullifying anything your opponent does. :)

[schild]

I think I've finally stumbled upon the problem. Since I've been playing card games at a competitive level since I before I knew what a vagina was, I consider "not making stupid mistakes" part of playing a game competitively. I don't consider "being skilled" to mean "can play correctly without fucking up." I consider being skilled to be able to see the things a a low-level competitor can not see. To make the better decision, not just the right or minimally correct decision.

Hearthstone, due to how unbelievably simplified it is (which will let it make a shitload of money in the short term and get a fuckload of players), doesn't have "better" decisions as far as I can tell. It just has right and wrong decisions based on what's on the board. As for what the opponent could play, who the fuck knows. You're not drafting against them in the arena. It's a fucking crapshoot. Maybe they got epics, maybe they didn't. You don't know. No one knows. It's an incredibly poor competitive environment. Unless it's supposed to be a slot machine. In which case, yea, I stand behind it being the Farmville of CCGs.

[Quinton]

Unless it's supposed to be a slot machine. In which case, yea, I stand behind it being the Farmville of CCGs.

You know, considering their "finding you an opponent" animation in Arena...

[Lakov_Sanite]

I don't see why hearthstone can't add complexity over time through expansions. It's not unheard of for card games to get more advanced with time.

[Morat20]

I don't see why hearthstone can't add complexity over time through expansions. It's not unheard of for card games to get more advanced with time.

Obviously if it's not as convoluted as a MtG which, I might add, they still can't get working online right -- it's just a dice roll. :)

I admit, I miss having to choose between defense and offense (it was a bit of a struggle to remember that there was no downside to attacking. At all), but it's got a decent foundation. Deck building is important as hell, for one, as is efficient and correct play.

It's not MtG and it's obviously not a three or four year old game with multiple expansions, but the sneering of "it's luck" reminds me a little bit of the sneering at WoW's "cartoon graphics".

MtG is pretty intimidating to a lot of people. Lord knows, I wouldn't really want to try picking it up again after 10 years away from it (other than occasionally screwing with the online thingy).

What's it missing that other card games have? The offense/defense choice (they've just got taunt as a forced defense), card interactions are a bit more limited but not entirely absent (deathrattle/battlecry is pretty easy to understand, although it's really obvious when someone knows what they're doing and when they don't). So what's missing? Depth of cards? Is it the smaller decks and faster games?

[Malakili]

What's it missing that other card games have? The offense/defense choice (they've just got taunt as a forced defense), card interactions are a bit more limited but not entirely absent (deathrattle/battlecry is pretty easy to understand, although it's really obvious when someone knows what they're doing and when they don't). So what's missing? Depth of cards? Is it the smaller decks and faster games?

The number one thing it's missing as far as I am concerned is instant speed spells/abilities and a "stack" of some kind.

This is exacerbated by the lack of blocking. In my mind the sort of most basic possible Magic interaction - I attack, you block, but aha! I have a "Giant Growth" and my creature is not more powerful - demonstrates the essence of the whole game. Even the most basic aggro decks tend to play some of these sorts of "combat tricks." It only gets more complicated and interesting from there.  The fact that Hearthstone lacks these two things is a total dealbreaker.

[Quinton]

I'm not sure what they could add later that would increase the depth significantly but not break the super-streamlined gameplay.  The downside (beyond complexity) to MTG style "you can interrupt/respond to the other player's actions" is that you need to given the other player a chance to do this, which means either they have to hit a key or click a button to say "nope, not doing anything" (like MTG with stops enabled) or have a little timer countdown 5-10s every time they might want to jump in (like in DOTP).  Either way will obviously slow the game down a bunch.

For all the additional waiting, the much less polished state of the client, the rather daunting learning curve, etc, I've found MTGO to be far more interesting than Hearthstone because of the richer gameplay and more complex interactions.

Even sealed and draft feel more interesting in MTG -- instead of 30 "pick 1 of 3" choices you end up with 90 random cards in sealed or 45 drafted cards and from this you assemble a 40 card deck (which will probably have 16-18 lands), so once again the random element is tempered by choices you make building your deck from your limited pool.

[schild]

The entire basis of the game in combat. That the combat nearly universally favors the attacker, since blockers aren't chosen by their controller, represents a complete lack of understanding on the designers parts for how to make a fun AND complex, but still easy to understand, game.

[Ironwood]

For my part, I understand what you're saying (I play Magic myself, or used to).  I'm merely reiterating what's been said for 10 pages now that I'm actually seeing it in action.

That said, there's currently NO Hex information on these boards that I can see and I've started watching the Hex videos that have been on lately and, holy fuck will that shutdown the casual player.

Any chance you can do us a state of the game Schild, or is there some super-seekrit embargo ?

[schild]

Heh, no, we moved all the Hex bullshit to a private forum. The state of the game is "it's still an Alpha." It's getting there.

I'd say its well on its way to being about a million times better than Magic Online, but we both know that's probably the lowest bar in online gaming to surpass. Given that Magic is the most popular game in the world and it's growing bonkers fast, I don't really see how Hex will shut down a casual player. Wizards and gaming stores have always said their Magic bread and butter is, in fact, casuals.

[Ironwood]

Well, I think the fact that it's actually a MMO/Single player will help, but what I really meant by the casual crowd are those not to interested in complexity in the ruleset.  The video I watched took about ten minutes for the chap to play his cards and attack and it really, really, really seemed to have a lot of steps and clicks to go through.

Magic is great for that, as everyone says here, but presenting it in a computer fashion tends to be offputting.

I may look at the slowpoke backers stuff.  May.

[Sophismata]

The key to Hex will be in getting the single player right. In the single player environment, you can control the more complex elements of play, like priority, because you can read the player's hand and customise waits accordingly without being worried that the AI will guess what's in the player's hand.

You get single player done correctly, and it will gate the multiplayer experience.

[Ironwood]

I would tend to agree.

In the case of Hearthstone, I'm not sure that they'll be able to merge the more complicated game that people want.  I suspect the easiest thing to do would be to have a Hearthstone:Advanced wherein the rules and cards become more complex.  As people are suggesting, I can't really see them building something more complex on this foundation of quicksand.

[Xilren's Twin]

The key to Hex will be in getting the single player right. In the single player environment, you can control the more complex elements of play, like priority, because you can read the player's hand and customise waits accordingly without being worried that the AI will guess what's in the player's hand.
You get single player done correctly, and it will gate the multiplayer experience.

That's definitely part of it.  The other appeal of Hex from a "casual" player standpoint is the cost.  They are many people who like the complexity of Magic but only play casually because they dont like how much they would have to pay to acquire the cards they need to play against serious players.  Even drafting can seem steep if you have to pay $15 a draft (MODO pricing).  The free to play nature of both HS and Hex will be a huge draw for people who feel priced out.

[Ironwood]

Yes.  I was taken a little aback when I was reading about Hex last night (first time I'd looked in a while) and they were stating it was going to be completely free to play with in game currency you could get for cards.

That pretty much changed it for me as a 'I might do this game' to 'I'm going to do this game.'

Hearthstone is kinda the same, but it would be worse if it had a cost attached to it because it's so .... ephemeral.

[Quinton]

MTGO's pricing is pretty offputting, even if you forgive them their clunky client.  Parity with the cardboard game means pretty steep pricing compared to all-digital and f2p+inapp type products.  Also, they still lack something as simple as an auction house, instead depending on their super clunky person-to-person trading and bots, leading to buying/selling cards being a huge pain in the ass -- you have to find a bot or person with the cards you want, trade for them, the only "currency" is event tickets which sell for $1, and the game itself cannot track partial tickets so you have to trust the bot or other player to remember that it owes you change / you have a credit.  Since running bots is nontrivial and requires leaving a computer on, it's not something players do casually which means there's no convenient way to list things for sale.  The resulting economy is a mess and strongly favors the bot traders over the average players and I suspect seriously artificially inflates prices of cards.

HEX is making good progress but is still quite alpha (has stability issues, does not have the entire first set implemented, etc).  It's what got me playing MTGO -- poking at the alpha made me want to play a magic-like ccg, but client incompleteness/instability got in the way of finishing games and hearthstone was a massive disappointment.  I suspect by the time HEX hits beta and reasonable stability I'll be playing it instead of MTGO.

For all the Magic bashing, the MTGO beta client is significantly more stable than HEX, their deckbuilder is massively more responsive, I have not yet had a game or tournament fail to complete, etc, etc.  On the other hand, given the rate HEX is improving and how many things are still broken about MTGO, I fully expect it to surpass MTGO in basic playability before long.  I do wish they'd fix basic things like "support resolutions > 1920x1080", "make list scrolling responsive", and "use fonts that are readable" sooner rather than later.

I do think Magic has somewhat better card name / art / flavor than HEX at the moment, but WotC has been doing that for 20 years and they have it down to a science.

[schild]

Cryptozoic has been doing card art/flavor/names for like 7 or 8 years, but Hex is more in the vein of WoW TCG in that department, so I can forgive some of their complex and/or stupid names because I know where they got that bad habit. Especially since all I see is a rules box and casting cost when I'm really playing.