If that reasoning was as valid as you thought it was, then the squelch feature shouldn't exist at all because it would deprive emote spammers from deciding to emote reasonably, thus ruining their experience. All while subjecting poor Timmy who just got out of class to 20+ Anduin wow emotes. Whose experience should be protected in the first place?
The point of that arguement was not to say that the enjoyment of 1 player should be put above the one of the other, but that a auto squelch feature would also block players whos behaviour might not even bother you, which results in less social interaction for both players. Think of the following scenario: You are a player who generally like small interactions with your opponents (greetings, well played, sometimes wow etc.), but also gets annoyed rather quickly.
Ideally you face players with the same preferences as you, have fun with him and move on.
Then you face a player who uses too many emotes, in which case you squelch him. So let's say that this squelch would now also apply to all other players until you unsquelch someone. Or you meet another one of these guys in the next game and get so annoyed that you enable the auto-squelch. The point is, you activated it now.
You play a couple more games, don't get annoyed anymore and go to sleep.
Then on the next day you will most likely have forgoten that you activated the auto squelch. You continue playing the game, don't get annoyed by anyone and are fine with it. But here's the catch: You might have met a player with the same preference as you during your matches, but you never interacted with him because you never saw any of his friendly emotes. The "have fun with him" part never happened, even though it could have. And that's the thing that directly influences other players in a negative way.
This would discourage your opponent from trying to use emotes in this match, and in the long term in every match too if he meets more players that don't respond, wether intentional or not (like in this example). Because why bother if no one responds? This eventually would all lead to 2 types of players: The ones who have auto-squelch active, and the ones who don't even bother emoting, because they think they are playing against someone who uses auto-squelch even if they don't. This would obviously be the worst case, but the point is that auto-squelch does not only effect you.
While I get the idea and do agree with it to a degree, i think you are simply overanalysing this.
Players need more interaction? Ok, give us an in-game chat, available throughout the match only. But don't come and say that it's too expensive to implement, that you need to hire moderators etc. I didn't ask for more interaction! If you do want more, this is the pinnacle of it.
Do players need even more communication? If yes, give us voice chat, for that match only. I don't hear anyone complaining that it's an option in games like CS or Dota. You can participate in it or not, but it's there and you have a choice! You can also mute certain players too or all of them if you want peace and quiet.
Are the developers lazy and the company greedy yet still pretending to know what most people like? If yes, then implement a half-ass emote system that doesn't do anything but annoy some us, while others mostly ignore it. And no choice to opt-out of it, generally speaking.
I'm sorry, but it's really this simple. It's all about money.
Do I care that I am squelched? Nope. Am I getting annoyed by emote spam? Sometimes, though roping every turn is like 10 times worse. Do I want to be able to make a choice for myself, like an adult, instead of letting a deranged company tell me what I want? Definitely! Will it affect others? Sure! What doesn't?!?!
And coming back to the last bits of the quote - suppose we do end up in that situation where no one is "communicating" anymore. Well, good! It's high time this lazy company realized that communication does not entail some half-ass emote spam!!
If I want to have any meaningful conversation after the game, i'll add the opponent and chat. Do they usually refuse because of being afraid of cursing? Yep! But isn't this the exact thing that this stupid idea of "communication" proliferates?!?! Guess what - having moderated in-game chat, with a risk of banning your global IP and your account at the 2nd or 3rd "mistake", would do wonders! I don't see anyone who spent even 100$ on this game risking that, while being in their right mind.
But now we come back to the target market for this game - hormonal teenagers. And it all fits - this is another reason why we only have emotes. Yet, those of us who want to ignore this "target market" can't do so automatically. It's extremely counterintuitive from this point of view.
The games i mentioned above - CS and Dota - can be played with new accounts easily. HS is a whole different beast. Getting rid of thousands of cards you collected over the years just because you decided to be an asshole in chat will surely teach you something. But sure, let the teenagers rope every turn and spam emotes with no consequences, because this is what "communication" means...
This looks like an arena card, or a 1-off for standard decks.
Also, 24 potential face damage is nuts. More randomness it seems. Probably very frustrating to play against or to lose to, but we know it's not their goal to make losing fun.
I'll write some long piece of s*t text in the hope that you'll find something useful in it. Don't take anything personally (i.e. in a bad way) since that isn't the intent.
Firstly, i have to start with some psychology and the fact that it seems to me you are portraying yourself as sort of a victim and looking for some kind of savior (i.e. perfect answer) from the community. Unfortunately, this isn't healthy to do, since the only person who can "save" yourself is YOU. We need to be sympathetic and supportive, but the answer MUST come from YOU. Otherwise nothing will ever change and you risk even slipping further away from your desire (because no one can really integrate in their brain an answer coming from "outside" rather than "inside", which leads to some disassociative behavior etc). There is something called a "circle of desire" and you stopped at taking real and meaningful action. Asking for an answer is not action, but an attempt of your subconscious (and inner saboteur) to delay solving the issue or to try and go around it. Why? No idea. The answer lies within you.
Thus, i'll try my best to not give any concrete answers to the problem at hand. Yet, i will say this: all the answers you ever require can only come from knowing yourself better. Constant evolution of your inner self and trying to match your feelings and your thoughts so that you are not broken. Now, enough with this :)
Secondly, some background about myself. I'm 37, engineer, working in programming, currently also studying law (second university), with an interest in strategy games (long ones!). I'm divorced, having a 2 year-old son, and a girlfriend that wants a kid of her own. I try to do my job as fast as possible so as to have enough time during the day to study for law school. As you can imagine, my time is limited to say the least. Nice to meet you :)
Thirdly, i'll provide some background for my gaming evolution and my perception of it. The relevant-to-our-discussion parts, of course.
I've been playing HS since beta, and had played WoW for like 5 years since Burning Crusade (stopped after they nerfed the dungeons in Cataclysm). Classic HS (same as BC WoW) was really nice. Even a few expansions after. The last one i enjoyed was the one with the christmas tree paladin. Everything was beatable! If you wanted long games, you could have them. Same for fast ones.
The more cards they added, the worse the game got. I was never really into stupid grinding (probably have some issues from my WoW days), so i never got to legend because it felt silly and useless. After some time it became very clear that they were catering to teenagers more and more (same happened in wow). I really hated that because the quality dropped.
Fast forward into the present, i cringe when i read Iksar's responses to AMAs. I curse their so-called designers and see how much they lack imagination compared to other people in the community. I loathe the laziness that goes into this game every round, and has happened for years.
When they realeased these quests (and even before with all the mana cheating) it was even more clear they want HS to become a toilet game (i.e. play while you poop). Class identity is crap and has been for a while. Faster and faster games means less thinking required. In other words, this game is definitely not for me (remember, i enjoy long strategy games; i recently bought Distant Worlds 2 and having a blast! Playing the largest galaxy size every time. It doesn't matter that i don't finish most games - the fun for me is in the beginning, the initial expansions etc).
There is so much crap happening in constructed HS that it's extremely frustrating to lose (and has been for a while now). There are many PC games i lose at, but it's never this frustrating. For example even in HS - Battlegrounds and Arena. The amount of tilt is very low compared to Standard. Why? Because most of the time you can do something (here we can have a long discussion, if you ever want to, on what my perception of Arena is and what i've realized over time, the barriers, how to mulligan in certain cases etc).
In other words, i mostly play arena now, with some BGs here and there. But, to play arena, i need gold. Which means i need to complete daily and weekly quests. I have 1 standard deck - quest hunter - which i play in bronze to get SOME stuff completed more quickly - and i almost puke every game (win or lose).
Why not pay for arena you may ask? Because blizzard went down the drain, as a company, long ago. Recent developments only confirmed that for me. I did pay for some arenas back in classic, naxx and 2-3 expansions after. But i stopped when i saw no improvements made to the game, no real power balance, more grindiness added, every new thing was a powercreep, extreme amount of useless cards being printed just to have fewer chances of getting what you actually want, etc. In other words, i'm not gonna pay 1 cent to this crap company anymore - not going to support their laziness, bad designs and complete lack of integration testing. Not even in other games ("do you guys have phones?!").
I recently found another card game, Skyweaver, that caught my eyes. Not going to pay anything for it either since it's probably only fun at the beginning, but at least it scratches the itch for card games. What i love is its "arena mode" - 2 players play random decks based on some of the "classes" their chosen hero has. Completely free. It's also very interactive - there are lots of things to think about and ways to answer things.
And this is what i like - a game that promotes strategic thinking! Be it a card game or an exploration space game or anything else. I do admit, i'm not really into the Dark Souls genre, since repeating the same moves for 30 minutes (to kill a mob) is not even close to "strategic", but it's something i want to explore soon (probably in elder ring).
Currently, HS provides this strategic thinking only in arena and (to some lower extent) BGs. This is my feeling and my experience with the game. Having played a lot of games in my life, i know i'll never enjoy constructed in the form it's now. Too much clutter and too much cheating (mana, card draw etc). I enjoy being able to control the pace of the game to some extent. Randomness is good, but extreme amounts of it are bad (BGs suffer from this, but the saving grace is that the game mode is not frustrating to lose at). Arena has swings, but it's mostly about accepting the variance and trying to get on top over a longer period of time (again - strategy, but with a differently required mindset).
Lastly, and as a conclusion, I hope you get something good out of my wall of text. Try to find out more things about yourself, and you'll realise what you need to do to get rid of that "inprisonment" feeling. When you realise what you enjoy, you'll know what to look for.
Not saying we need to pay for anything. Seems really nice even as f2p.
There is a mode where you battle opponents with decks of completely random cards from the "classes" that your hero has (at least that's what I think happens). Like a free-cost arena with random decks. I have to say that battles end up being really interesting, especially against other people that have experience in card games.
In other words, the crypto thing doesn't mean anything yet. Quite enjoying the mechanics and such. I don't care about constructed decks yet either - still need to gather cards it seems, and there are lots of them.
So, if anyone has more experience in the later stages of this game, please do share your thoughts. I'm curios for an insight into the future.
I just started playing it and seems really nice. Might look like HS but it's really not. There are different layers of complexity to it that make it fresh and interesting.
Now, has anyone played enough of it to know if it's playable without paying any money even later down the road? I.e. not becoming frustrating and such.
Why do they even print these cards? Don't these "designers" know that they previously accelerated the game and basically eliminated the "control" archetype, willingly?!
Why even bother to print 8 mana cards?! Sure, if by some huge luck you can keep some 0-1 mana spells in hand, AND reach turn 8, you may use this to try and come back. Most likely you've already used all spells to survive until then.
I just don't understand where these people come up with these ideas from, completely opposite from what they did before and thinking it'll be used in a meaningful way...
Hi folks! Just found this thread (again, lol). I'm not currently reading any books but I would love to start again.
My issue with most of them is how long they are and the abundance of useless sections. I've tried reading The Foundation in the past, but it got boring after some hundreds of pages. If the essential action could be put together, i would gladly read it and have fun doing it. I simply don't have the desire/time to skim through pages to search for 1-2 paragraphs that evolve the main plot or such.
So, this is my question to you guys: what do you recommend that is action-packed and having very few filler/useless sections?
I know i've read quite a bit of short stories (few dozen pages at most) on the web and really enjoyed them. Are there any real books that are even close to this in terms of plot presentation?
As for the genre, i love sci-fi, post-apocaliptics, fantasy, magic stuff, nazis, anything out of the ordinary really.
With the nerf […] if we undershoot, well at least it's better than before. If we overshoot, that deck just stops seeing play entirely.
With buffs […], if we undershoot, it was a waste, nothing happens. If we overshoot, we created a new problem deck.
Am I the only one that sees the same problem in both cases?
Nerfs + overshoot = useless = buffs + undershoot.
Nerfs + undershoot = problem = buffs + overshoot.
Wtf? It's like they don't like buffs because they can't powercreep in the future, yet they say it's hard not to powercreep. Well, i guess it's not that hard if you start buffing cards...
Again, i'm getting sick of these people and their "design" decisions.
My problem with constructed is that it makes older cards not viable (so rotating sets from the past is useless, unless they are chosen specifically from those that got out close together), and the cost cheating for cards.
I'm really bitter about it, since there is a really simple fix that devs simply don't want to do - minimum cost of 1 for all cards, unless designed to be 0.
This is the reason i haven't played constructed in a good while, and only spent some time in BGs. The cost is too great to be up to date with your collection, and there is too much catering to fast strategies (which i don't really enjoy - the aggro decks from old expansions/classic were actually ok, because there weren't any stupid swings throughout the game - that was for the control decks, and i did enjoy these a lot because they were actually stable, balanced and required more thinking most of the time).
I know, i enjoyed the game from a time that is never coming back due to powercreeping, and i've made my piece with it (mostly). Nevertheless, it irks me to see so many games (even on stream) and feel dirty about how the action takes place. It's not fun for me anymore.
Unfortunately, one needs friends to play this with. Friends that like the same things
:(
Hope they release an online version too.
But the freeze mechanic worked like that from the beta. Why were you surprised by it if you played from 2015?
PS: i really hope for immune to become targetable by battlecries :)
Where is the description for the curse, please?
While I get the idea and do agree with it to a degree, i think you are simply overanalysing this.
Players need more interaction? Ok, give us an in-game chat, available throughout the match only. But don't come and say that it's too expensive to implement, that you need to hire moderators etc. I didn't ask for more interaction! If you do want more, this is the pinnacle of it.
Do players need even more communication? If yes, give us voice chat, for that match only. I don't hear anyone complaining that it's an option in games like CS or Dota. You can participate in it or not, but it's there and you have a choice! You can also mute certain players too or all of them if you want peace and quiet.
Are the developers lazy and the company greedy yet still pretending to know what most people like? If yes, then implement a half-ass emote system that doesn't do anything but annoy some us, while others mostly ignore it. And no choice to opt-out of it, generally speaking.
I'm sorry, but it's really this simple. It's all about money.
Do I care that I am squelched? Nope. Am I getting annoyed by emote spam? Sometimes, though roping every turn is like 10 times worse. Do I want to be able to make a choice for myself, like an adult, instead of letting a deranged company tell me what I want? Definitely! Will it affect others? Sure! What doesn't?!?!
And coming back to the last bits of the quote - suppose we do end up in that situation where no one is "communicating" anymore. Well, good! It's high time this lazy company realized that communication does not entail some half-ass emote spam!!
If I want to have any meaningful conversation after the game, i'll add the opponent and chat. Do they usually refuse because of being afraid of cursing? Yep! But isn't this the exact thing that this stupid idea of "communication" proliferates?!?! Guess what - having moderated in-game chat, with a risk of banning your global IP and your account at the 2nd or 3rd "mistake", would do wonders! I don't see anyone who spent even 100$ on this game risking that, while being in their right mind.
But now we come back to the target market for this game - hormonal teenagers. And it all fits - this is another reason why we only have emotes. Yet, those of us who want to ignore this "target market" can't do so automatically. It's extremely counterintuitive from this point of view.
The games i mentioned above - CS and Dota - can be played with new accounts easily. HS is a whole different beast. Getting rid of thousands of cards you collected over the years just because you decided to be an asshole in chat will surely teach you something. But sure, let the teenagers rope every turn and spam emotes with no consequences, because this is what "communication" means...
...between apes and/or neanderthals.
The sunken paladin card is gonna promote some hand buffing again :)
This looks like an arena card, or a 1-off for standard decks.
Also, 24 potential face damage is nuts. More randomness it seems. Probably very frustrating to play against or to lose to, but we know it's not their goal to make losing fun.
Do countered battlecry minions still trigger it, or other effects tied to summoning?
Do countered spells count for spell completion or similar effects?
So many reversed words this time :D
Nice deck! I was looking for something like this for a while :D
Any ideas on win rates?
@NebuchadnezzarHS
I'll write some long piece of s*t text in the hope that you'll find something useful in it. Don't take anything personally (i.e. in a bad way) since that isn't the intent.
Firstly, i have to start with some psychology and the fact that it seems to me you are portraying yourself as sort of a victim and looking for some kind of savior (i.e. perfect answer) from the community. Unfortunately, this isn't healthy to do, since the only person who can "save" yourself is YOU. We need to be sympathetic and supportive, but the answer MUST come from YOU. Otherwise nothing will ever change and you risk even slipping further away from your desire (because no one can really integrate in their brain an answer coming from "outside" rather than "inside", which leads to some disassociative behavior etc). There is something called a "circle of desire" and you stopped at taking real and meaningful action. Asking for an answer is not action, but an attempt of your subconscious (and inner saboteur) to delay solving the issue or to try and go around it. Why? No idea. The answer lies within you.
Thus, i'll try my best to not give any concrete answers to the problem at hand. Yet, i will say this: all the answers you ever require can only come from knowing yourself better. Constant evolution of your inner self and trying to match your feelings and your thoughts so that you are not broken. Now, enough with this :)
Secondly, some background about myself. I'm 37, engineer, working in programming, currently also studying law (second university), with an interest in strategy games (long ones!). I'm divorced, having a 2 year-old son, and a girlfriend that wants a kid of her own. I try to do my job as fast as possible so as to have enough time during the day to study for law school. As you can imagine, my time is limited to say the least. Nice to meet you :)
Thirdly, i'll provide some background for my gaming evolution and my perception of it. The relevant-to-our-discussion parts, of course.
I've been playing HS since beta, and had played WoW for like 5 years since Burning Crusade (stopped after they nerfed the dungeons in Cataclysm). Classic HS (same as BC WoW) was really nice. Even a few expansions after. The last one i enjoyed was the one with the christmas tree paladin. Everything was beatable! If you wanted long games, you could have them. Same for fast ones.
The more cards they added, the worse the game got. I was never really into stupid grinding (probably have some issues from my WoW days), so i never got to legend because it felt silly and useless. After some time it became very clear that they were catering to teenagers more and more (same happened in wow). I really hated that because the quality dropped.
Fast forward into the present, i cringe when i read Iksar's responses to AMAs. I curse their so-called designers and see how much they lack imagination compared to other people in the community. I loathe the laziness that goes into this game every round, and has happened for years.
When they realeased these quests (and even before with all the mana cheating) it was even more clear they want HS to become a toilet game (i.e. play while you poop). Class identity is crap and has been for a while. Faster and faster games means less thinking required. In other words, this game is definitely not for me (remember, i enjoy long strategy games; i recently bought Distant Worlds 2 and having a blast! Playing the largest galaxy size every time. It doesn't matter that i don't finish most games - the fun for me is in the beginning, the initial expansions etc).
There is so much crap happening in constructed HS that it's extremely frustrating to lose (and has been for a while now). There are many PC games i lose at, but it's never this frustrating. For example even in HS - Battlegrounds and Arena. The amount of tilt is very low compared to Standard. Why? Because most of the time you can do something (here we can have a long discussion, if you ever want to, on what my perception of Arena is and what i've realized over time, the barriers, how to mulligan in certain cases etc).
In other words, i mostly play arena now, with some BGs here and there. But, to play arena, i need gold. Which means i need to complete daily and weekly quests. I have 1 standard deck - quest hunter - which i play in bronze to get SOME stuff completed more quickly - and i almost puke every game (win or lose).
Why not pay for arena you may ask? Because blizzard went down the drain, as a company, long ago. Recent developments only confirmed that for me. I did pay for some arenas back in classic, naxx and 2-3 expansions after. But i stopped when i saw no improvements made to the game, no real power balance, more grindiness added, every new thing was a powercreep, extreme amount of useless cards being printed just to have fewer chances of getting what you actually want, etc. In other words, i'm not gonna pay 1 cent to this crap company anymore - not going to support their laziness, bad designs and complete lack of integration testing. Not even in other games ("do you guys have phones?!").
I recently found another card game, Skyweaver, that caught my eyes. Not going to pay anything for it either since it's probably only fun at the beginning, but at least it scratches the itch for card games. What i love is its "arena mode" - 2 players play random decks based on some of the "classes" their chosen hero has. Completely free. It's also very interactive - there are lots of things to think about and ways to answer things.
And this is what i like - a game that promotes strategic thinking! Be it a card game or an exploration space game or anything else. I do admit, i'm not really into the Dark Souls genre, since repeating the same moves for 30 minutes (to kill a mob) is not even close to "strategic", but it's something i want to explore soon (probably in elder ring).
Currently, HS provides this strategic thinking only in arena and (to some lower extent) BGs. This is my feeling and my experience with the game. Having played a lot of games in my life, i know i'll never enjoy constructed in the form it's now. Too much clutter and too much cheating (mana, card draw etc). I enjoy being able to control the pace of the game to some extent. Randomness is good, but extreme amounts of it are bad (BGs suffer from this, but the saving grace is that the game mode is not frustrating to lose at). Arena has swings, but it's mostly about accepting the variance and trying to get on top over a longer period of time (again - strategy, but with a differently required mindset).
Lastly, and as a conclusion, I hope you get something good out of my wall of text. Try to find out more things about yourself, and you'll realise what you need to do to get rid of that "inprisonment" feeling. When you realise what you enjoy, you'll know what to look for.
Cheers!
Not saying we need to pay for anything. Seems really nice even as f2p.
There is a mode where you battle opponents with decks of completely random cards from the "classes" that your hero has (at least that's what I think happens). Like a free-cost arena with random decks. I have to say that battles end up being really interesting, especially against other people that have experience in card games.
In other words, the crypto thing doesn't mean anything yet. Quite enjoying the mechanics and such. I don't care about constructed decks yet either - still need to gather cards it seems, and there are lots of them.
So, if anyone has more experience in the later stages of this game, please do share your thoughts. I'm curios for an insight into the future.
Hi folks!
Is anyone playing Skyweaver?
https://www.skyweaver.net/
I just started playing it and seems really nice. Might look like HS but it's really not. There are different layers of complexity to it that make it fresh and interesting.
Now, has anyone played enough of it to know if it's playable without paying any money even later down the road? I.e. not becoming frustrating and such.
Thanks!
Why do they even print these cards? Don't these "designers" know that they previously accelerated the game and basically eliminated the "control" archetype, willingly?!
Why even bother to print 8 mana cards?! Sure, if by some huge luck you can keep some 0-1 mana spells in hand, AND reach turn 8, you may use this to try and come back. Most likely you've already used all spells to survive until then.
I just don't understand where these people come up with these ideas from, completely opposite from what they did before and thinking it'll be used in a meaningful way...
Should the tavern ticket be available for arenas too? I didn't get one if so.
Wow, they managed to botch the SQL script too. I can only imagine how their database is designed :/
Obviously. It's communist! Just look at how equal all the cards are!
🤣
Common randomness results from this game :)) yet funny for the streamers' reaction.
Hi folks! Just found this thread (again, lol). I'm not currently reading any books but I would love to start again.
My issue with most of them is how long they are and the abundance of useless sections. I've tried reading The Foundation in the past, but it got boring after some hundreds of pages. If the essential action could be put together, i would gladly read it and have fun doing it. I simply don't have the desire/time to skim through pages to search for 1-2 paragraphs that evolve the main plot or such.
So, this is my question to you guys: what do you recommend that is action-packed and having very few filler/useless sections?
I know i've read quite a bit of short stories (few dozen pages at most) on the web and really enjoyed them. Are there any real books that are even close to this in terms of plot presentation?
As for the genre, i love sci-fi, post-apocaliptics, fantasy, magic stuff, nazis, anything out of the ordinary really.
Thanks!
Am I the only one that sees the same problem in both cases?
Nerfs + overshoot = useless = buffs + undershoot.
Nerfs + undershoot = problem = buffs + overshoot.
Wtf? It's like they don't like buffs because they can't powercreep in the future, yet they say it's hard not to powercreep. Well, i guess it's not that hard if you start buffing cards...
Again, i'm getting sick of these people and their "design" decisions.
My problem with constructed is that it makes older cards not viable (so rotating sets from the past is useless, unless they are chosen specifically from those that got out close together), and the cost cheating for cards.
I'm really bitter about it, since there is a really simple fix that devs simply don't want to do - minimum cost of 1 for all cards, unless designed to be 0.
This is the reason i haven't played constructed in a good while, and only spent some time in BGs. The cost is too great to be up to date with your collection, and there is too much catering to fast strategies (which i don't really enjoy - the aggro decks from old expansions/classic were actually ok, because there weren't any stupid swings throughout the game - that was for the control decks, and i did enjoy these a lot because they were actually stable, balanced and required more thinking most of the time).
I know, i enjoyed the game from a time that is never coming back due to powercreeping, and i've made my piece with it (mostly). Nevertheless, it irks me to see so many games (even on stream) and feel dirty about how the action takes place. It's not fun for me anymore.