Well sure, if you have 3+ mana with a secret and both Kirin Tor Mage and this card in hand, of course you play the kirin tor instead. But you usually run way more secrets than kirin tor mages in your secret mage deck so getting a discount on your expensive 3 mana secret more often than twice is pretty good support for that deck. Kabal Lackey is a staple alongside the kirin tor in wild exactly for that reason, so I'm sure this will become a staple in secret mage in standard as well. Inconspicuous Rider casts the secrets from your deck, but you will draw your secrets more often than not so you cannot rely on it completely.
It's a really complex system, with a wide variety of XP sources, and a ton of different rewards, so the math can get rather involved. Leaving parts out or estimating things can lead you significantly off.
1. I would rather not estimate the xp I get out of my quest but your system leave me with little choice since there's an effing tier system that makes no sense. Why the hell would I not reroll an 800xp quest for a better one? Again, I don't understand why they'd even go with this bs tier system in the first place. Not only will I reroll every 800xp quest, if I get another 800xp from my reroll, I wouldn't want to play more hearthstone that day so I can reroll it tomorrow. In effect I'm softlocked from the game, because ironically making it easy to accomplish also makes it impossible to avoid finishing.
Believe it or not, some players prefer easier quests that can be completed more quickly. You may think that's the stupidest thing in the world, but that is why you are allowed to reroll them.
People have calculated the real values. That is exactly how Chadd arrived at the numbers he gave us in this article. That is how he knows you should have no trouble making as much gold as you did before.
If you can't play very much, then you weren't making a lot of gold before. There's no reason to complain about the new system.
You also probably won't get your money's worth out of the pass. You should not have bought it until you had a better idea of how far you might get. The Tavern Pass rewards are retroactive, so even if you buy it on the last day of the expansion, you still get everything you would have earned up to that point.
Like with Line Hopper, I just don't think Outcast cards are cheap enough, abundant enough, or easily played from hand enough to gain enough stats to make this worth playing. When compared to Questing Adventurer, Redeemed Pariah is just to limiting in how it scales for it to be of any threat in a DH deck.
Like with Redeemed Pariah, I just don't think Outcast cards are cheap enough, abundant enough, or easily played from hand enough to make use of multiple discounts in a given turn. When compared to Sorcerer's Apprentice in Mage, there are plenty of cheap spells that don't require hand position to make cheating out multiple spells way easier than what Line Hopper can accomplish in DH.
This compares unfavorably to Kirin Tor Mage as a turn 3 play, and only can get better than the Mage if it sticks around for multiple turns, which is unlikely with its low stats. I think Secret Mage already has enough 3 drops with Kirin Tor Mage and Inconspicuous Rider as the Rider thins out your deck rather than limiting your hand resources.
Its always going to some sort of balance when it comes to profits vs the consumer. As much as corporate wants more money, the consumer will likely want to pay less, or get more for the same. Far as I am concerned, the consumer should plays its part by ensuring that corporate won't get away easily with any excesses, and corporate will play its part by being as greedy as it can be without pissing anyone off. That I think we can put a full stop on and move on.
On the second part of your remark, I have to admit I can't find anything to argue here. I suppose you're responding to my remarks regarding how the idea of 'enjoying a game for years' can be applied to any game not just HS. Its still true even with your remarks applied because the qualitative factor is subjective. Its still applicable and true to say I enjoyed my cinema session more despite having only spent 2 hours and 10 bucks in it, as compared to HS where I've spent near 500 bucks but 1000 hours on it. So its possible to compare my HS experience with my cinema experience on the sole factor which is the quality of my enjoyment. But that's beside the point. What I was trying to say is despite my subjective experiences, I still ended up paying 500 bucks compared to 10 for the cinema, and here's blizz with their new neat idea which I feel disadvantaged me in a way, and I'm pushing back on it.
The fact of the matter is I shouldn't be doing any soul-searching of any sort because I love HS, but recent changes have made it difficult to continue in the same manner. Should we initiate a divorce simply because of one disagreement? Its not a matter of opportunity costs; some of us are also partially emotionally invested into it. If the other party is being unreasonable, we push back for some compromise, not do 'soul searching' as one treats the other like a commodity.
I'd compare this to Freezing Trap, as it discourages your opponent from attacking with a large minion and allowing you to more guarantee the secret trigger by removing around that large minion. However, I think Freezing Trap is better as it applies to enemy minions also attacking your minions and acts as a tempo punish with taking the minion out of play with a 2 mana tax. Shadow Clone doesn't prevent the minion from damaging your face and still demands another removal resource if a large minion triggers the secret and you want to keep your copy of the large minion on board. Overall, Shadow Clone is a less consistent secret than Freezing Trap, which may discourage its inclusion in Rogue decks.
You know, this whole community outcry kinda remindes me of an essay I wrote a while ago. It was about the different phases on how people reacted to new things. "We" are currently in the 6. Phase where People belive the new thing isn't good enough and that this isn't going to change even though there is no reason to belive that. The next phase would be beliving that newcomers would be overwhelmed by the new thing.
Two 3/3s on turn 3 is insanely powerful, not to mention that it can summon more 3/3s you draw this later in the game. Secrets have proven to be good tempo for Hunter and this just pushes that notion over the top. I think Highlander Hunter would love this, Face Hunter might consider it, and there might just be a dedicated Secret Hunter because Petting Zoo is so powerful.
I haven't been following the uproar about the new system. My first impressions weren't bad but i'm not exactly thrilled either. The reward structure seems to be the same as shown during initial previews. They said that players should expect to earn about the same as they did in the previous system with some bonus on top. The thing is: the game is becoming more expensive. The new mini-set idea is going to cost extra gold from the player which will harm them in the long term if they wish to remain F2P. They will obtain less packs at the beginning of an expansion thus they will have less cards to play with. And this will keep piling up until they can no longer keep up without paying. It looks like a nasty snowball. The cosmetic rewards won't make up for such loss. They said that numbers can still be adjusted so let's see what they are going to do.
If you wanted a 5/2 stealth minion on turn 4, why not play Burrowing Scorpid instead? Scorpid is a more consistent top deck and has a 2 damage battlecry over Sweet Tooth.
Also, since this is the second day it has been implemented, the community feedback will be much less valuable to blizzard since there's really not that much data they can work with. So if you want to complain, at least wait for a month or so.
For now, we just have to accept the new system since they most likely won't be changing it anytime soon.
I'm surprised at the positive marks given for Idol of Y'Shaarj. Are we forgetting that it also costs 8 mana? You can highroll into Blood of G'huun, but that card costs 9 mana, so in effect you're playing a very expensive priest deck and hoping not to die.
There's a good reason why rez priest hasnt been seeing lots of play in standard. It gets bodied by nearly every deck around and the proliferation of transform effects from shaman and mage just destroys the deck entirely. I doubt it will make any return in the upcoming meta.
Without a doubt, Insight is the best card here. Ghuun a not so far second.
Well I did say it would be cheeky, but there is a nugget of truth in there. Blizz's accountants will be demanding some profit margin, and the fewer players contribute to that, the higher the price has to be. Of course it is not nearly so simple as to then say if more people started spending money on it that Blizz would reduce the prices; that could instead be taken as a sign that they could increase prices due to higher demand. Ultimately I don't know where HS sits with respect to keeping the accountants happy, so I'm not trying to claim what I just said is necessarily applying in practice.
I am also fully aware Blizz wants F2P players around to maintain a large playerbase and avoid the issues Artefact had, but it is nevertheless the paying players that fund the continued development of HS. Because of this there is a limit to how generous they can be. That is not to say they are at or even near that limit, only that casually handing out 1000 gold would have to be a rare occurrence. I don't know, maybe at about the frequency they have a good seasonal event (none of that Forbidden Library crap)...
-------------------------
Regarding enjoyment, it might help to step back and view HS as a hobby. Not specifically a video game, nor a card game, just a hobby. A good hobby could be defined as something with a high ratio of time spent enjoying them to money put in. There are important complications due to opportunity cost, which will prevent this ratio actually being infinite, but you get the point. That metric applies just as well to buying a movie, a video game, Warhammer, D&D, sport, sketching, etc. It's all just killing time in a way you are emotionally and financially happy with.
Where that ratio needs to be will depend entirely on who you ask. It absolutely is possible to be completely F2P and enjoy the game, at which point HS is a successful hobby. Likewise you can spend $80 every 4 months, spend 200 hours on it in that time plus however much time you spend on forums, and come out with a much better ratio than going to the cinema.
I think it is much healthier to view HS this way than to try to compare it to a conventional video game where you spend, say, $60 and play it for however long you play it for. Whether that video game was a good investment is still ultimately decided by how many hours you were happy playing it for. If that's 1000 hours then great, but if its 4 then it was crap. That matters a lot more than the fact you owned the whole thing. Note the important distinction between hours played and hours enjoyed.
Which brings us onto the opportunity cost. Do not ignore this! You should never be doing any hobby if you'd prefer to be doing something else. You are only wasting your own time. So I guess I'd say to put aside qualms with the devs for a moment (you can pick them back up later) and do a bit of soul-searching. [Insert something profound here.]
I'm probably gonna get downvoted for this, but as long as they're listening to community feedback and being open about it I'm fine with the new battle pass system. This is literally the second day it's been implemented so we don't exactly know how it will go in the future other than predictions and calculations. We can only hope that they're willing to improve the system when the change is not good enough.
Has Blizzard explained anywhere why did they takeaway some of the stats from the profile page?
where are my total arena wins? where are my total ranked wins(I cba to open a calculator and add all my wins from different classes, please don't suggest)?
New Mage Minion - Game Master
Well sure, if you have 3+ mana with a secret and both Kirin Tor Mage and this card in hand, of course you play the kirin tor instead. But you usually run way more secrets than kirin tor mages in your secret mage deck so getting a discount on your expensive 3 mana secret more often than twice is pretty good support for that deck. Kabal Lackey is a staple alongside the kirin tor in wild exactly for that reason, so I'm sure this will become a staple in secret mage in standard as well. Inconspicuous Rider casts the secrets from your deck, but you will draw your secrets more often than not so you cannot rely on it completely.
Blizzard Responds to Hearthstone Battle Pass Experience Concerns
Believe it or not, some players prefer easier quests that can be completed more quickly. You may think that's the stupidest thing in the world, but that is why you are allowed to reroll them.
Blizzard Responds to Hearthstone Battle Pass Experience Concerns
People have calculated the real values. That is exactly how Chadd arrived at the numbers he gave us in this article. That is how he knows you should have no trouble making as much gold as you did before.
Blizzard Responds to Hearthstone Battle Pass Experience Concerns
If you can't play very much, then you weren't making a lot of gold before. There's no reason to complain about the new system.
You also probably won't get your money's worth out of the pass. You should not have bought it until you had a better idea of how far you might get. The Tavern Pass rewards are retroactive, so even if you buy it on the last day of the expansion, you still get everything you would have earned up to that point.
Blizzard Responds to Hearthstone Battle Pass Experience Concerns
So you're actually surprised that Blizzard doesn't want you to be f2p forever?
It's not nasty -- it's how they keep the lights on.
A Wild Hearthstone Weekend Featuring Menagerie Paladin, Silas OTK Warrior, Highlander Hunter, and More!
2 akama in the wet ninja list it's impossible so what's the 30's card of this deck ?
Blizzard Responds to Hearthstone Battle Pass Experience Concerns
Absolutely, if you don't think it's worth your time to play the game, you should not play the game.
New Demon Hunter Minion - Redeemed Pariah
Like with Line Hopper, I just don't think Outcast cards are cheap enough, abundant enough, or easily played from hand enough to gain enough stats to make this worth playing. When compared to Questing Adventurer, Redeemed Pariah is just to limiting in how it scales for it to be of any threat in a DH deck.
New Demon Hunter Minion - Line Hopper
Like with Redeemed Pariah, I just don't think Outcast cards are cheap enough, abundant enough, or easily played from hand enough to make use of multiple discounts in a given turn. When compared to Sorcerer's Apprentice in Mage, there are plenty of cheap spells that don't require hand position to make cheating out multiple spells way easier than what Line Hopper can accomplish in DH.
New Mage Minion - Game Master
This compares unfavorably to Kirin Tor Mage as a turn 3 play, and only can get better than the Mage if it sticks around for multiple turns, which is unlikely with its low stats. I think Secret Mage already has enough 3 drops with Kirin Tor Mage and Inconspicuous Rider as the Rider thins out your deck rather than limiting your hand resources.
Blizzard Responds to Hearthstone Battle Pass Experience Concerns
Its always going to some sort of balance when it comes to profits vs the consumer. As much as corporate wants more money, the consumer will likely want to pay less, or get more for the same. Far as I am concerned, the consumer should plays its part by ensuring that corporate won't get away easily with any excesses, and corporate will play its part by being as greedy as it can be without pissing anyone off. That I think we can put a full stop on and move on.
On the second part of your remark, I have to admit I can't find anything to argue here. I suppose you're responding to my remarks regarding how the idea of 'enjoying a game for years' can be applied to any game not just HS. Its still true even with your remarks applied because the qualitative factor is subjective. Its still applicable and true to say I enjoyed my cinema session more despite having only spent 2 hours and 10 bucks in it, as compared to HS where I've spent near 500 bucks but 1000 hours on it. So its possible to compare my HS experience with my cinema experience on the sole factor which is the quality of my enjoyment. But that's beside the point. What I was trying to say is despite my subjective experiences, I still ended up paying 500 bucks compared to 10 for the cinema, and here's blizz with their new neat idea which I feel disadvantaged me in a way, and I'm pushing back on it.
The fact of the matter is I shouldn't be doing any soul-searching of any sort because I love HS, but recent changes have made it difficult to continue in the same manner. Should we initiate a divorce simply because of one disagreement? Its not a matter of opportunity costs; some of us are also partially emotionally invested into it. If the other party is being unreasonable, we push back for some compromise, not do 'soul searching' as one treats the other like a commodity.
New Rogue Spell - Shadow Clone
I'd compare this to Freezing Trap, as it discourages your opponent from attacking with a large minion and allowing you to more guarantee the secret trigger by removing around that large minion. However, I think Freezing Trap is better as it applies to enemy minions also attacking your minions and acts as a tempo punish with taking the minion out of play with a 2 mana tax. Shadow Clone doesn't prevent the minion from damaging your face and still demands another removal resource if a large minion triggers the secret and you want to keep your copy of the large minion on board. Overall, Shadow Clone is a less consistent secret than Freezing Trap, which may discourage its inclusion in Rogue decks.
Blizzard Responds to Hearthstone Battle Pass Experience Concerns
You know, this whole community outcry kinda remindes me of an essay I wrote a while ago. It was about the different phases on how people reacted to new things. "We" are currently in the 6. Phase where People belive the new thing isn't good enough and that this isn't going to change even though there is no reason to belive that. The next phase would be beliving that newcomers would be overwhelmed by the new thing.
New Hunter Spell - Petting Zoo
Two 3/3s on turn 3 is insanely powerful, not to mention that it can summon more 3/3s you draw this later in the game. Secrets have proven to be good tempo for Hunter and this just pushes that notion over the top. I think Highlander Hunter would love this, Face Hunter might consider it, and there might just be a dedicated Secret Hunter because Petting Zoo is so powerful.
Blizzard Responds to Hearthstone Battle Pass Experience Concerns
Key concern for me is that winning feels very lackluster, even if it would not matter. Maybe it's time to leave HS
Blizzard Responds to Hearthstone Battle Pass Experience Concerns
I haven't been following the uproar about the new system. My first impressions weren't bad but i'm not exactly thrilled either. The reward structure seems to be the same as shown during initial previews. They said that players should expect to earn about the same as they did in the previous system with some bonus on top. The thing is: the game is becoming more expensive. The new mini-set idea is going to cost extra gold from the player which will harm them in the long term if they wish to remain F2P. They will obtain less packs at the beginning of an expansion thus they will have less cards to play with. And this will keep piling up until they can no longer keep up without paying. It looks like a nasty snowball. The cosmetic rewards won't make up for such loss. They said that numbers can still be adjusted so let's see what they are going to do.
New Rogue Minion - Sweet Tooth
If you wanted a 5/2 stealth minion on turn 4, why not play Burrowing Scorpid instead? Scorpid is a more consistent top deck and has a 2 damage battlecry over Sweet Tooth.
New Hunter Minion - Trampling Rhino
I think that, in practice, the excess damage on its own isn't going to translate to much face damage, and Hunter isn't doing a lot of buffing in hand or on board with the exceptions of Adorable Infestation and Scavenger's Ingenuity. Overall, Trampling Rhino compares unfavorably to similar options like Rotnest Drake or Krolusk Barkstripper.
Blizzard Responds to Hearthstone Battle Pass Experience Concerns
Also, since this is the second day it has been implemented, the community feedback will be much less valuable to blizzard since there's really not that much data they can work with. So if you want to complain, at least wait for a month or so.
For now, we just have to accept the new system since they most likely won't be changing it anytime soon.
New Hunter Spell - Don't Feed the Animals
More like don't play this card! Holding onto cards is as much Hunter's class identity as freeze cards are to Shaman.
Our Thoughts on Hearthstone's Madness at the Darkmoon Faire Priest Cards
I'm surprised at the positive marks given for Idol of Y'Shaarj. Are we forgetting that it also costs 8 mana? You can highroll into Blood of G'huun, but that card costs 9 mana, so in effect you're playing a very expensive priest deck and hoping not to die.
There's a good reason why rez priest hasnt been seeing lots of play in standard. It gets bodied by nearly every deck around and the proliferation of transform effects from shaman and mage just destroys the deck entirely. I doubt it will make any return in the upcoming meta.
Without a doubt, Insight is the best card here. Ghuun a not so far second.
Blizzard Responds to Hearthstone Battle Pass Experience Concerns
Well I did say it would be cheeky, but there is a nugget of truth in there. Blizz's accountants will be demanding some profit margin, and the fewer players contribute to that, the higher the price has to be. Of course it is not nearly so simple as to then say if more people started spending money on it that Blizz would reduce the prices; that could instead be taken as a sign that they could increase prices due to higher demand. Ultimately I don't know where HS sits with respect to keeping the accountants happy, so I'm not trying to claim what I just said is necessarily applying in practice.
I am also fully aware Blizz wants F2P players around to maintain a large playerbase and avoid the issues Artefact had, but it is nevertheless the paying players that fund the continued development of HS. Because of this there is a limit to how generous they can be. That is not to say they are at or even near that limit, only that casually handing out 1000 gold would have to be a rare occurrence. I don't know, maybe at about the frequency they have a good seasonal event (none of that Forbidden Library crap)...
-------------------------
Regarding enjoyment, it might help to step back and view HS as a hobby. Not specifically a video game, nor a card game, just a hobby. A good hobby could be defined as something with a high ratio of time spent enjoying them to money put in. There are important complications due to opportunity cost, which will prevent this ratio actually being infinite, but you get the point. That metric applies just as well to buying a movie, a video game, Warhammer, D&D, sport, sketching, etc. It's all just killing time in a way you are emotionally and financially happy with.
Where that ratio needs to be will depend entirely on who you ask. It absolutely is possible to be completely F2P and enjoy the game, at which point HS is a successful hobby. Likewise you can spend $80 every 4 months, spend 200 hours on it in that time plus however much time you spend on forums, and come out with a much better ratio than going to the cinema.
I think it is much healthier to view HS this way than to try to compare it to a conventional video game where you spend, say, $60 and play it for however long you play it for. Whether that video game was a good investment is still ultimately decided by how many hours you were happy playing it for. If that's 1000 hours then great, but if its 4 then it was crap. That matters a lot more than the fact you owned the whole thing. Note the important distinction between hours played and hours enjoyed.
Which brings us onto the opportunity cost. Do not ignore this! You should never be doing any hobby if you'd prefer to be doing something else. You are only wasting your own time. So I guess I'd say to put aside qualms with the devs for a moment (you can pick them back up later) and do a bit of soul-searching. [Insert something profound here.]
Blizzard Responds to Hearthstone Battle Pass Experience Concerns
An idea to fix the track
Replace every pack here a random epic card
Every five (maybe ten) levels give random legendary. Leave gold as they are, if there is a cosmetic as a price, leave this one also in
Blizzard Responds to Hearthstone Battle Pass Experience Concerns
I'm probably gonna get downvoted for this, but as long as they're listening to community feedback and being open about it I'm fine with the new battle pass system. This is literally the second day it's been implemented so we don't exactly know how it will go in the future other than predictions and calculations. We can only hope that they're willing to improve the system when the change is not good enough.
New Profile Page
Has Blizzard explained anywhere why did they takeaway some of the stats from the profile page?
where are my total arena wins? where are my total ranked wins(I cba to open a calculator and add all my wins from different classes, please don't suggest)?