This is one of the cards, with the other combo pieces mentioned previously, that will deter anyone from playing on board after turn 5 or so.
It'll basically mean getting back to the "from hand" play style instead of the minion-based one, unless you want to take 12+ damage to the face in one turn.
Too bad, i really had hopes to actually see more minions and more board battles this expansion...
This and Frostwolf Kennels could be summoning a lot of stealthy wolves. I would've made something with this, similar to the Sword of 1000 truths, but with spawning a chicken or rabbit or something.
This card is most likely overpowered at 13 mana, with all the rush minions and tokens. But we'll see :) at least compared to the priest card, this doesn't seem like filler
I think that if you only get 5 armor out of it, it's going to be very weak and end up removed from most decks. The initial 10 armor gain needs to have some consistent use (or the frost tag) for this card to be included.
The UI is gonna be pretty simple i think. Remember where they show the overloaded mana crystals? That's where they'll show the 10 extra mana (i.e. with different graphics from the overloaded ones).
This also means that shaman is NOT gonna (ever) recieve the 20 mana buff ;)
Not sure if you did anything, but I can't reproduce the bug anymore. Previously, it occurred on every "fresh" opening of the website (and I didn't update the browser i use).
Hi. I got one question: why does the Mercenaries -> Parties show me a list of decks, on the website?
Also, I don't seem able to complete the oozefest item of "visiting the mercenary parties list", even though i've accessed that section. Not sure if these 2 things are related or not.
Extra from what others said above, my gripes with the game include the grindiness of the mode (coupled with the wasted time in menus and such), and the fact that the meta was already solved in pvp apparently. The latter point doesn't affect me since i'm gonna stick to just pve most likely, but it's a clear way to take a lot of fun out of the game for some.
Also, the fact that we don't have specific quest screens/branches for the main game modes (hs+arena+brawl, BGs, Mercs) is really annoying. Being limited to 3 dailies/weeklies that can be totally random is just sad. 1 more permanent slot for each game mode would've been nice to have, and the ability to complete the quests in any mode, FROM LAUNCH.
Or simply have a different number of quests for each mode, with the ability to complete them in any mode (maybe with some exceptions).
Wow, amazing! Do consider learning to code in Unity - might be doable by yourself (the core game), then hire some artists for the drawing part.
Few questions (as for the AMA):
1. which are the turn phases?
2. Are there blockers or only minions with "taunt"? Any kind of spell protection (like divine shields, immune, etc)?
3. Please explain more the idea behind Basic and Virtual. Which are the core cards? Will you consider a different path of making new content than Blizzard did(i.e. standard vs wild)?
Let's say that I can accept the fact that there have been very large changes and some imbalances were prone to happen no matter what (unsurprisingly for Blizzard, "a bunch" of fixes are required as opposed to just a few).
Hopefully, when they do much smaller changes, they will be capable of proper testing instead of having to do a huge balance patch after a month.
well then how about you come up with a plan on how to do it, because clearly you are convinced that it's possible in the first place.
Actually it was done. During the earlier days/first few expansions of HS. You had aggro, control and combo in a decent amount. Sure, there were polarized matches (freeze mage vs warrior) but those were not the majority of games.
Don't get me wrong, perfect balance is indeed impossible. I'm not asking for that.
It's also not my job to fix their design issues after lots of expansions that each introduced more and more powercreep, to make sure at least some of the cards from the new expansions get played.
I know this is why you believe it is impossible - otherwise we'd end up with new content that doesn't get played at all. No one wants that.
What i'm saying is to move away from direct or indirect stat increases (and/or cost decreases) and into the realm of "fun" effects and minions that force board interactions most of the time. Remember the general outcry when the 4 mana 7/7 shaman card was released? And it was more or less OP for that time, when supported correctly. Now we have had extreme mana cheating for a while. This means a disproportionate ratio between cost and power, and of course it's overpowered. At least the 4 mana 7/7 had overload.
How should they do it? I don't care nor am I paid to think about it. Here are a few free ideas: a complete power reset every 1-2 expansions, properly testing the damn game before launching an expansions, tweaking the average game time to 15 turns(from the previous testing), no more 0 cost cards unless designed that way, assigning proper costs to abilities and minion stats and then to the card itself, designing nice looking efects that *feel* more powerful than they are stat-wise(see the winrate of caverns rogue vs how powerful the effect felt in the game), focus a lot more on making cards and decks fun to play *against* - more meaningful matches that you remember longer vs more matches that you don't give a crap about, etc.
There's a lot of psychology needed, including for educating the playerbase. Yet they are doing things directly opposite, probably for financial gain. I'm sure a good balance for everyone can be achieved.
Imagine the chaos that exists within their code repositories considering they botched this for the Nth time. Git branches are hard, man!
This is one of the cards, with the other combo pieces mentioned previously, that will deter anyone from playing on board after turn 5 or so.
It'll basically mean getting back to the "from hand" play style instead of the minion-based one, unless you want to take 12+ damage to the face in one turn.
Too bad, i really had hopes to actually see more minions and more board battles this expansion...
It kind of has antisynergy with Spring the Trap, i mean, unless you use many secrets in your deck.
This and Frostwolf Kennels could be summoning a lot of stealthy wolves. I would've made something with this, similar to the Sword of 1000 truths, but with spawning a chicken or rabbit or something.
There was a time when that was close to overpowered. Maybe they are slowly returning to something less swingy and stupid.
Yea, this is the shitty epic that no one wants to open in their packs
This card is most likely overpowered at 13 mana, with all the rush minions and tokens. But we'll see :) at least compared to the priest card, this doesn't seem like filler
I think that if you only get 5 armor out of it, it's going to be very weak and end up removed from most decks. The initial 10 armor gain needs to have some consistent use (or the frost tag) for this card to be included.
I'm curious if there will some kind of bug when a recruited Charge minion receives Rush, through this card.
I call dibs on it 😁😆
They keep printing overpowered cards... :(
The UI is gonna be pretty simple i think. Remember where they show the overloaded mana crystals? That's where they'll show the 10 extra mana (i.e. with different graphics from the overloaded ones).
This also means that shaman is NOT gonna (ever) recieve the 20 mana buff ;)
Not sure if you did anything, but I can't reproduce the bug anymore. Previously, it occurred on every "fresh" opening of the website (and I didn't update the browser i use).
Sorry for the late reply. Here's a screenshot:
https://pasteboard.co/iUf1XKrTDj5h.jpg
The link in the titlebar is:
https://outof.cards/hearthstone/mercenaries/
As for the steps, i'm opening the main page, click on "mercenaries", then click on "parties".
Doing that again now seems to make the page show up properly, so i'm guessing some sort of caching issue.
Hi. I got one question: why does the Mercenaries -> Parties show me a list of decks, on the website?
Also, I don't seem able to complete the oozefest item of "visiting the mercenary parties list", even though i've accessed that section. Not sure if these 2 things are related or not.
Let me know if i'm doing something wrong. Thanks
Would be interesting to have a leaderboard based on how fast we complete these puzzles :D
Holy crap! :O
Extra from what others said above, my gripes with the game include the grindiness of the mode (coupled with the wasted time in menus and such), and the fact that the meta was already solved in pvp apparently. The latter point doesn't affect me since i'm gonna stick to just pve most likely, but it's a clear way to take a lot of fun out of the game for some.
Also, the fact that we don't have specific quest screens/branches for the main game modes (hs+arena+brawl, BGs, Mercs) is really annoying. Being limited to 3 dailies/weeklies that can be totally random is just sad. 1 more permanent slot for each game mode would've been nice to have, and the ability to complete the quests in any mode, FROM LAUNCH.
Or simply have a different number of quests for each mode, with the ability to complete them in any mode (maybe with some exceptions).
Wow, amazing! Do consider learning to code in Unity - might be doable by yourself (the core game), then hire some artists for the drawing part.
Few questions (as for the AMA):
1. which are the turn phases?
2. Are there blockers or only minions with "taunt"? Any kind of spell protection (like divine shields, immune, etc)?
3. Please explain more the idea behind Basic and Virtual. Which are the core cards? Will you consider a different path of making new content than Blizzard did(i.e. standard vs wild)?
Thanks for an awesome read!
Curious about the BG balance changes.
Let's say that I can accept the fact that there have been very large changes and some imbalances were prone to happen no matter what (unsurprisingly for Blizzard, "a bunch" of fixes are required as opposed to just a few).
Hopefully, when they do much smaller changes, they will be capable of proper testing instead of having to do a huge balance patch after a month.
Actually it was done. During the earlier days/first few expansions of HS. You had aggro, control and combo in a decent amount. Sure, there were polarized matches (freeze mage vs warrior) but those were not the majority of games.
Don't get me wrong, perfect balance is indeed impossible. I'm not asking for that.
It's also not my job to fix their design issues after lots of expansions that each introduced more and more powercreep, to make sure at least some of the cards from the new expansions get played.
I know this is why you believe it is impossible - otherwise we'd end up with new content that doesn't get played at all. No one wants that.
What i'm saying is to move away from direct or indirect stat increases (and/or cost decreases) and into the realm of "fun" effects and minions that force board interactions most of the time. Remember the general outcry when the 4 mana 7/7 shaman card was released? And it was more or less OP for that time, when supported correctly. Now we have had extreme mana cheating for a while. This means a disproportionate ratio between cost and power, and of course it's overpowered. At least the 4 mana 7/7 had overload.
How should they do it? I don't care nor am I paid to think about it. Here are a few free ideas: a complete power reset every 1-2 expansions, properly testing the damn game before launching an expansions, tweaking the average game time to 15 turns(from the previous testing), no more 0 cost cards unless designed that way, assigning proper costs to abilities and minion stats and then to the card itself, designing nice looking efects that *feel* more powerful than they are stat-wise(see the winrate of caverns rogue vs how powerful the effect felt in the game), focus a lot more on making cards and decks fun to play *against* - more meaningful matches that you remember longer vs more matches that you don't give a crap about, etc.
There's a lot of psychology needed, including for educating the playerbase. Yet they are doing things directly opposite, probably for financial gain. I'm sure a good balance for everyone can be achieved.