I'd say that is a fairly safe craft even this early on if you are planning on playing any future Secret Mage. I can't see the card leaving the archetype until it rotates out its just that good!
I've always recommended waiting 2 weeks before crafting anything to get a better look at the meta. A week can be a decent enough indicator though if days 5-7 don't see much movement in what is being played.
Right now, before they make any changes, there is less gold earned for most players. However, I doubt if you were making 10k gold before you'd only make 3600 now (would love to see the math on that).
And this is why the majority of the time I preface datamined info with "this may change etc." It is so important to cover your ass when you're going to be the source of something important and you know people are going to mangle it.
But, there are times, such as the XP with the rewards track, when I didn't bother with a disclaimer at the content of it itself because it was easily verifiable as true in the game. I do think some more care could have been taken to address that there were going to be other sources of experience, because it is quite clear people forgot about that, but I don't think in this case it would have calmed any of the rage.
I do love that I still get comments about Celeste. I especially love it when they are in the realm of "that was a bunch of bs". It shows even a proper disclaimer doesn't go very far with people and the general understanding that should exist of "stuff can be in a game client for a long time without a release" clearly doesn't.
I love datamining though and giving everyone insight into what's going on with the game that they aren't telling us about.
I know some people don't mean a literal Hearthstone 2, and they certainly mean well when talking about it, but the way I see it, we're already past HS 2.
The base of Hearthstone was a very simple game. We had standard, we had the forge, and we had a couple of card sets. Each time new features have been added to the game, it kept going farther away from the base. At this point, we must at least be on HS 4.
A new client is not needed and would be the largest waste of engineering time, time that could be better spent adding new features. Unity is an excellent platform to develop on and Blizzard has improved their tooling a ton over the years for it. If there are bugs, they need to fix the bugs, not create more by developing a new client. Performance problems? They are continuing to optimize the game which is great to see, though maybe not quite quickly enough for everyone's taste.
It would be a poor choice to scrap the interface. They do need to update parts of it (like the main screen only having 4 buttons to access all the content in the game, but for the most part, we're really lucky to have what we have since the HS team is generally good at UI/UX.
This expansion and the goodies that came with it was definitely a step into a new era of Hearthstone and I like it.
The achievements UI is bad. There is no sugarcoating it at all, they didn't do a good job. I should not have to click on them to earn my points. It is super silly that the points don't display on my friendslist, and it is a bit weird that there are zero rewards tied to any individual achievement.
I know Blizzard will argue that experience is a reward that gets you to the real rewards, but the experience on those DMF achievements is only going to last until the next expansion comes out. Where are the classic pack rewards for some of the more basic achievements for new players?
I agree that I may be too optimistic at times, but the way I see it, Blizzard backed themselves into a corner on this one.
If they truly were to not at least match gold rates from the old system after constantly saying they were going to, they are going to have an even worse time on their hands. They were unbelievably dumb for not giving us the full picture out the gate, especially when they had to of known we'd have the XP rates datamined day 1 since it was all client-side.
I think Duels is in an okay spot. I understand I may be in the minority with that and it is an excellent discussion topic, but the way I see it is as follows:
Not every mode in the game needs to have the same accessibility (mainly describing F2P)
Being a constructed-driven mode, it makes sense that a certain set of cards is going to have influence over it
Now, what I think is bullshit with Duels is the heroic mode. I see both sides of the argument with the mode but its just makes me feel off that we're still locked based on our collections. Its like the ultimate win-more mode requiring a solidly sized collection and then money on top of it to enter. The gamble is cool, I like that just like I like it in Brawliseum, but I don't like that it is inaccessible to newer players. I don't have any sympathy for older players who dusted their wild collections years ago because I always felt that was a silly thing to do when you never knew what the future would hold or if you may have wanted to hop onto the wild train (its why I never touched my wild cards to get dust), but it does suck that new players are penalized that heavily.
The dust economy in Hearthstone is definitely shit though. With most legendaries feeling mandatory to have, and even if that isn't statistically true, it still feels like it is which isn't great. Nothing feels worse than not getting that one legendary you wanted to play with and needing to disenchant four others to make up for it. I'm surprised we haven't seen more out there considering Runeterra has changed the landscape on what F2P means for a card game. I know it isn't anywhere near as large as HS, but I see more and more posts in the Runeterra community of people leaving Hearthstone for it due to the accessibility. We've been begging Blizzard for more cosmetics, make the game more about cosmetics, monetize it by providing cosmetics with good value and not just by adding more legendaries into the game.
Achievements I'm fine with. Achievements do not matter at all in the grand scheme of things, especially not the first round of them. I expected very little out of the achievement system because I know their goal was going to be to use key patches to add more "normal" achievements as a way to get people to hop back into Hearthstone. A lot of games do achievements differently but from my experience with WoW, I would never expect to get every achievement in a game anyway, especially considering the game is an active service and not something single player you get through and never again. Having achievements with different levels of accessibility is important to pave way for long-term goals and to allow for there to be variance in the number of achievements all the players are unlocking.
I still think they should leave in the later rewards while still giving out gold in addition to them. Giving people a handful of older expansion packs DOES NOT HURT AT ALL. We're talking an average of 100 dust per pack so with 5 packs you can make... an epic card.
Hearthstone as a whole though has improved so much over the past 2 years though which gives me a lot of hope for the overall lifespan of the game. Around the time when Second Dinner was formed, when I wished Yong and Brode a farewell from the community, I was actively looking to disengage as well because I wasn't feeling it anymore. I'm glad I ended up staying because things did a 180 and we started getting solid improvements.
There will always be something bad, but I think Hearthstone does a good enough job now with the good things that we have some room for mistakes, especially if we know it'll be fixed as is the case with the rewards track. They're only human, minus that devil Kotick, so the best thing we can do as a community is say we won't stand for nonsense and stop playing if it ends up becoming a shit show.
That's also why Out of Cards isn't just a site focused on Hearthstone (though admittedly lately we've been lacking in the other titles). I refuse to rely on one single company, especially one that has been making some interesting choices lately across most of their titles, as a source of primary income. If Hearthstone flopped tomorrow, it would be very easy to move on right now, not so much if we were only Hearthstone focused. Diversification ftw!
It is so disappointing when a company with the usual good UI makes these blunders.
Seriously though, why is Tavern Brawl so front and center? I know they don't want to abandon the box because its "Hearthstone", but it's time to take it out into the backyard and put it into a grave.
Or, have two modes (MTG Arena sorta does this). Have a simplified UI for when you're new and then swap to advanced later on. Not that MTG Arena should be used as an interface king, because it is so far from it, but at least I can find most of the modes there in a single menu with... WORDS!
It certainly exists! This is just a snapshot of one top deck per class :)
Priest is usually slow to ramp up so things should look very different next week!
Nothing special in the patch. Super small with exactly the changes that were detailed. womp womp
Whaaat?? Doing a series with the Old Gods?? No waayyy =D
Comparing your score to others!
The whole system is an alternative metric to the simple wins to show how dedicated you are to the game.
I haven't seen anything too successful yet, but we're still so early on so hopefully that changes because N'Zoth, God of the Deep is such a cool card.
If you want to check out a Big Druid list with N'Zoth which is the most promising:
https://outof.cards/hearthstone/decks/21303-big-nzoth-druid-darkmoon-faire
I'd say that is a fairly safe craft even this early on if you are planning on playing any future Secret Mage. I can't see the card leaving the archetype until it rotates out its just that good!
I've always recommended waiting 2 weeks before crafting anything to get a better look at the meta. A week can be a decent enough indicator though if days 5-7 don't see much movement in what is being played.
Gifting this holiday season is going to be next level :D
They dont do the deck recipe brawls right a way anymore
The spoiling of results is hilarious.
I knew I opened a Warrior legendary when I got the warrior achievement for opening up 10 unique cards from DMF which was super lame.
Descriptions definitely need to be added to the toasts.
Right now, before they make any changes, there is less gold earned for most players. However, I doubt if you were making 10k gold before you'd only make 3600 now (would love to see the math on that).
And this is why the majority of the time I preface datamined info with "this may change etc." It is so important to cover your ass when you're going to be the source of something important and you know people are going to mangle it.
But, there are times, such as the XP with the rewards track, when I didn't bother with a disclaimer at the content of it itself because it was easily verifiable as true in the game. I do think some more care could have been taken to address that there were going to be other sources of experience, because it is quite clear people forgot about that, but I don't think in this case it would have calmed any of the rage.
I do love that I still get comments about Celeste. I especially love it when they are in the realm of "that was a bunch of bs". It shows even a proper disclaimer doesn't go very far with people and the general understanding that should exist of "stuff can be in a game client for a long time without a release" clearly doesn't.
I love datamining though and giving everyone insight into what's going on with the game that they aren't telling us about.
I don't like the idea of a Hearthstone 2.
I know some people don't mean a literal Hearthstone 2, and they certainly mean well when talking about it, but the way I see it, we're already past HS 2.
The base of Hearthstone was a very simple game. We had standard, we had the forge, and we had a couple of card sets. Each time new features have been added to the game, it kept going farther away from the base. At this point, we must at least be on HS 4.
A new client is not needed and would be the largest waste of engineering time, time that could be better spent adding new features. Unity is an excellent platform to develop on and Blizzard has improved their tooling a ton over the years for it. If there are bugs, they need to fix the bugs, not create more by developing a new client. Performance problems? They are continuing to optimize the game which is great to see, though maybe not quite quickly enough for everyone's taste.
It would be a poor choice to scrap the interface. They do need to update parts of it (like the main screen only having 4 buttons to access all the content in the game, but for the most part, we're really lucky to have what we have since the HS team is generally good at UI/UX.
This expansion and the goodies that came with it was definitely a step into a new era of Hearthstone and I like it.
Honestly, it could be better. We're still really small so the effort that is put into a lot of the articles isn't really worthwhile.
I love that you love what we're doing though <3
The achievements UI is bad. There is no sugarcoating it at all, they didn't do a good job. I should not have to click on them to earn my points. It is super silly that the points don't display on my friendslist, and it is a bit weird that there are zero rewards tied to any individual achievement.
I know Blizzard will argue that experience is a reward that gets you to the real rewards, but the experience on those DMF achievements is only going to last until the next expansion comes out. Where are the classic pack rewards for some of the more basic achievements for new players?
I agree that I may be too optimistic at times, but the way I see it, Blizzard backed themselves into a corner on this one.
If they truly were to not at least match gold rates from the old system after constantly saying they were going to, they are going to have an even worse time on their hands. They were unbelievably dumb for not giving us the full picture out the gate, especially when they had to of known we'd have the XP rates datamined day 1 since it was all client-side.
I think Duels is in an okay spot. I understand I may be in the minority with that and it is an excellent discussion topic, but the way I see it is as follows:
Now, what I think is bullshit with Duels is the heroic mode. I see both sides of the argument with the mode but its just makes me feel off that we're still locked based on our collections. Its like the ultimate win-more mode requiring a solidly sized collection and then money on top of it to enter. The gamble is cool, I like that just like I like it in Brawliseum, but I don't like that it is inaccessible to newer players. I don't have any sympathy for older players who dusted their wild collections years ago because I always felt that was a silly thing to do when you never knew what the future would hold or if you may have wanted to hop onto the wild train (its why I never touched my wild cards to get dust), but it does suck that new players are penalized that heavily.
The dust economy in Hearthstone is definitely shit though. With most legendaries feeling mandatory to have, and even if that isn't statistically true, it still feels like it is which isn't great. Nothing feels worse than not getting that one legendary you wanted to play with and needing to disenchant four others to make up for it. I'm surprised we haven't seen more out there considering Runeterra has changed the landscape on what F2P means for a card game. I know it isn't anywhere near as large as HS, but I see more and more posts in the Runeterra community of people leaving Hearthstone for it due to the accessibility. We've been begging Blizzard for more cosmetics, make the game more about cosmetics, monetize it by providing cosmetics with good value and not just by adding more legendaries into the game.
Achievements I'm fine with. Achievements do not matter at all in the grand scheme of things, especially not the first round of them. I expected very little out of the achievement system because I know their goal was going to be to use key patches to add more "normal" achievements as a way to get people to hop back into Hearthstone. A lot of games do achievements differently but from my experience with WoW, I would never expect to get every achievement in a game anyway, especially considering the game is an active service and not something single player you get through and never again. Having achievements with different levels of accessibility is important to pave way for long-term goals and to allow for there to be variance in the number of achievements all the players are unlocking.
I still think they should leave in the later rewards while still giving out gold in addition to them. Giving people a handful of older expansion packs DOES NOT HURT AT ALL. We're talking an average of 100 dust per pack so with 5 packs you can make... an epic card.
Hearthstone as a whole though has improved so much over the past 2 years though which gives me a lot of hope for the overall lifespan of the game. Around the time when Second Dinner was formed, when I wished Yong and Brode a farewell from the community, I was actively looking to disengage as well because I wasn't feeling it anymore. I'm glad I ended up staying because things did a 180 and we started getting solid improvements.
There will always be something bad, but I think Hearthstone does a good enough job now with the good things that we have some room for mistakes, especially if we know it'll be fixed as is the case with the rewards track. They're only human, minus that devil Kotick, so the best thing we can do as a community is say we won't stand for nonsense and stop playing if it ends up becoming a shit show.
That's also why Out of Cards isn't just a site focused on Hearthstone (though admittedly lately we've been lacking in the other titles). I refuse to rely on one single company, especially one that has been making some interesting choices lately across most of their titles, as a source of primary income. If Hearthstone flopped tomorrow, it would be very easy to move on right now, not so much if we were only Hearthstone focused. Diversification ftw!
Yup, yup, and yup.
It is so disappointing when a company with the usual good UI makes these blunders.
Seriously though, why is Tavern Brawl so front and center? I know they don't want to abandon the box because its "Hearthstone", but it's time to take it out into the backyard and put it into a grave.
Or, have two modes (MTG Arena sorta does this). Have a simplified UI for when you're new and then swap to advanced later on. Not that MTG Arena should be used as an interface king, because it is so far from it, but at least I can find most of the modes there in a single menu with... WORDS!
Here's everything you need to know about the currencies (or not need to know since its China exclusive)
https://outof.cards/hearthstone/587-new-hearthstone-currencies-possibly-coming-arcane-orbs-runestones
Agreed. Stupid design choice.
They also should have included a description of what you did when you get the popup saying it was earned.