You need all the latest cards to unlock the hero powers and treasures. You need all wild cards to build a competitive deck. You still have to pay 150 gold to enter heroic mode. Your run has failed before your first match if you don't get one of the broken hero/power/treasure combinations.
And what do you get from it? Monthly leaderboard? Fancy stats screen? Invites to great competitions?
It really needs to change.
(and as I got blasted for at the start for saying; it is not f2p friendly, is it, hmm....)
And Wild fans say Blizzard never gives them any nerfs. Sorry, I had to say it, you can't give me a podium and have me not make a comment like that. Love you.
Yeah, screw those wild fans who love the format, but see how standard gets their nerfs even before broken cards combos are released. But, wild, even with Blizzard being told before the release date, still have to sit around and watch wild be a turgid playground for a week.
Very inclusive and friendly of you. Good use of platform. Great site, love you.
You start getting duplicates after having all the cards of that rarity (common, rare, etc.)
The only thing that comes to mind is that you already had all rares and epic of DMF, if not, if you had one normal and one golden Revenant Rascal, you could still get another normal or golden one, since you don't have 2 normal ones, and again, if not... bugs.
I have 27 DMF epic cards (7 doubles, 10 singles and a triple)
It's a bit difficult for me to comment on because I always knew it was there, so of course it was obvious to me, but surely you must have noticed the tabs stick around when building a deck and were thinking 'I wish I could choose a hero for this deck'?
No judgement here, I'm just curious.
Hearthstone does not have an intuitive interface. The whole thing is a bit weird. When I first started, there were all sorts of things that I expected to find that aren't there. Or maybe they are! After a while I just gave up. So, to me, it is not surprising that there are things I missed.
Here's another one. I don't really keep that careful track of my card collection. Sometimes I see a deck and what I want to do is grab the deck code into Hearthstone, and when it shows me that I'm missing lots of expensive cards, I just want to delete it. But I can't. I have click 'done', accept that I don't want to auto-complete it, then click delete and confirm. Did I miss something there too?
There always seems to be such a focus on competitiveness. It is a game. It is meant to be fun.
First of all, I would focus on other parts of the game than cosmetic statistics.
If I had to focus on stats, I would go with personal things. Such as: most used card (number of times played in a deck), most played card.
But, things like more deck construction functionality would be higher priority. 3 simple examples:
let me add more than 30 cards, then whittle it down to a valid deck
setting a card back and hero portrait per deck
quick swap pool - for when I want to play a few games comparing how well 2 cards perform
These things would make the player experience much better than some aggressive stats that a lot of (potential) players don't give a stuff about. And, to swing back to stats, things like the quick-swap pool could have stats.
I really liked arena when I first started. With no card collection to speak of, spending 300 gold on 2 arena runs was a better return than spending it on 3 packs. I still remember my first ever 12 run fondly :)
Now, I dip into it occasionally, but I usually just find I've drafted a mediocre deck and not played it that well. And the packs have much less value. So, with my overall interest waning, I just go there with my free tickets. Didn't even realise I could use them for heroic duels until yesterday.
There's a little double dip of sadness with the low-rolls.
You get the low-roll 900xp *and* it is almost impossible to not complete (draw 30 cards). So, if you play at all, you can't avoid completing the quest you didn't want.
There are several of these little toxic features in the game. Usually when they are mentioned people get angry at the poster. Interesting that you have create a whole article on it.
I don't know which is better - my gut says that 10 gold for three wins probably felt better because winning felt like it mattered then. I do know that the current rewards track feels better than the first iteration did, and I feel like I will have a good deal of gold to show for my efforts by the end of the expansion. I'm a paying player (I buy most bundles), but I like to supplement with gold-bought packs at the beginning of an expansion too.
From a F2P point of view, so comparing cost to achievable gold (again considering I am F2P - meaning casual), the new system is no better. At best, it is the same. They could have done absolutely nothing, and I'd still be in the same place. I'm sure they've captured a load of people who suddenly feel like it is worth spending more money, but for me it is actually a little bit more boring than before. Their *really big thing* was "a sense of achievement". Meh.
Considering how bad it was to start with, when they first said that it was great, but actually shafted players, it really shows how money grabbing they are.
I'm level 41 at the moment. Vaguely looking forward to the level 50 hero avatar thing. Hoping they are going to take away all the clicks needed to navigate around.
My wish would be for a 'mark all achievement notifications read' button. I'm really not interested in all that scrolling and clicking foreach and every one.
I personally don't think we have any reason to be nervous about the new system. If it is greedy and stringent so that you need to pay money to keep up, then blizzard won't make money, they will just lose customers. And they know this. The people at blizzard aren't stupid, they want their game to be better, more accessible, and feel more rewarding to play.
Blizzard doesn't want to make things worse, and we have no reason to believe that they do. They are implementing a new system because it will be better, and if it doesn't work out that way, I am confident that they will fix it. Blizzard wants more people to play the game, not less, that is why they have been making so many positive changes this year.
Yes, the first reward system they showed us was bad, but we told them so and they listened and revamped it. Have some faith that the people at Blizzard know what they are doing.
I think you give them too much credit :D
The new ladder system is not F2P friendly.
When new content is added, it is usually OP - new BG heroes are only available to those that pay for a pass.
Duels is only available to those that purchased a bundle.
I don't think they want F2P. They want people to think they're getting a good deal. That is, hiding the good stuff away from F2P.
They do need to make money, they can't give it away.
Does it take into consideration where cards interact. Like [Hearthstone Card (Sorcerer's Apprentice[\card] effects. Do they add weighting in your comparison?
Taking to a silly (and obvs theoretical) extreme, if I could get infinite hand size and infinite mana reduction, then one "fill my hand with spells" would win me the game. That would be the ultimate deck, no need to build anything else. So, presumably at some point the RNG + cost reduction + hand fill will take away skill. Is that point realistically not likely? Maybe you just run out of time trying to find the card you want in the 100s in your hand :D
So gold and dust aren't fun because they don't do anything directly.
But, you've added a massively complicated layer of XP on top of it, that also does nothing, and really is not fun at all.
You need all the latest cards to unlock the hero powers and treasures. You need all wild cards to build a competitive deck. You still have to pay 150 gold to enter heroic mode. Your run has failed before your first match if you don't get one of the broken hero/power/treasure combinations.
And what do you get from it? Monthly leaderboard? Fancy stats screen? Invites to great competitions?
It really needs to change.
(and as I got blasted for at the start for saying; it is not f2p friendly, is it, hmm....)
Yeah, screw those wild fans who love the format, but see how standard gets their nerfs even before broken cards combos are released. But, wild, even with Blizzard being told before the release date, still have to sit around and watch wild be a turgid playground for a week.
Very inclusive and friendly of you. Good use of platform. Great site, love you.
Visual rarity bug: https://twitter.com/Celestalon/status/1352320211945361420
I have 27 DMF epic cards (7 doubles, 10 singles and a triple)
I bought the bundle and opened a pack. I now have 3 Hysteria and 1 Revenant Rascal.
Rally and hysteria have visual rarity bugs: https://twitter.com/Celestalon/status/1352320211945361420
Hearthstone does not have an intuitive interface. The whole thing is a bit weird. When I first started, there were all sorts of things that I expected to find that aren't there. Or maybe they are! After a while I just gave up. So, to me, it is not surprising that there are things I missed.
Here's another one. I don't really keep that careful track of my card collection. Sometimes I see a deck and what I want to do is grab the deck code into Hearthstone, and when it shows me that I'm missing lots of expensive cards, I just want to delete it. But I can't. I have click 'done', accept that I don't want to auto-complete it, then click delete and confirm. Did I miss something there too?
Ha ha!
They should make that a bit more obvious :)
There always seems to be such a focus on competitiveness. It is a game. It is meant to be fun.
First of all, I would focus on other parts of the game than cosmetic statistics.
If I had to focus on stats, I would go with personal things. Such as: most used card (number of times played in a deck), most played card.
But, things like more deck construction functionality would be higher priority. 3 simple examples:
These things would make the player experience much better than some aggressive stats that a lot of (potential) players don't give a stuff about. And, to swing back to stats, things like the quick-swap pool could have stats.
I really liked arena when I first started. With no card collection to speak of, spending 300 gold on 2 arena runs was a better return than spending it on 3 packs. I still remember my first ever 12 run fondly :)
Now, I dip into it occasionally, but I usually just find I've drafted a mediocre deck and not played it that well. And the packs have much less value. So, with my overall interest waning, I just go there with my free tickets. Didn't even realise I could use them for heroic duels until yesterday.
There's a little double dip of sadness with the low-rolls.
You get the low-roll 900xp *and* it is almost impossible to not complete (draw 30 cards). So, if you play at all, you can't avoid completing the quest you didn't want.
There are several of these little toxic features in the game. Usually when they are mentioned people get angry at the poster. Interesting that you have create a whole article on it.
From a F2P point of view, so comparing cost to achievable gold (again considering I am F2P - meaning casual), the new system is no better. At best, it is the same. They could have done absolutely nothing, and I'd still be in the same place. I'm sure they've captured a load of people who suddenly feel like it is worth spending more money, but for me it is actually a little bit more boring than before. Their *really big thing* was "a sense of achievement". Meh.
Considering how bad it was to start with, when they first said that it was great, but actually shafted players, it really shows how money grabbing they are.
I'm level 41 at the moment. Vaguely looking forward to the level 50 hero avatar thing. Hoping they are going to take away all the clicks needed to navigate around.
My wish would be for a 'mark all achievement notifications read' button. I'm really not interested in all that scrolling and clicking foreach and every one.
Thanks
How do we see our snowflake activity?
I have absolutely no idea
I think you give them too much credit :D
I don't think they want F2P. They want people to think they're getting a good deal. That is, hiding the good stuff away from F2P.
They do need to make money, they can't give it away.
Great article!
Does it take into consideration where cards interact. Like [Hearthstone Card (Sorcerer's Apprentice[\card] effects. Do they add weighting in your comparison?
Taking to a silly (and obvs theoretical) extreme, if I could get infinite hand size and infinite mana reduction, then one "fill my hand with spells" would win me the game. That would be the ultimate deck, no need to build anything else. So, presumably at some point the RNG + cost reduction + hand fill will take away skill. Is that point realistically not likely? Maybe you just run out of time trying to find the card you want in the 100s in your hand :D
) Not Found]There are, I think, two ways to get to the pack opener. The first via the 'cards' menu item. The second is via the widget.
Under the menu, it is the 14th(!) item down. I have to scroll to see, it goes off screen. And it will only get longer with new expansions.
The widget disappears if nobody saves a pack in 7 days.
0730 PT is, I believe:
The summer times go back just a few days after.