We had a season reset around the release of Barrens, but we still stuck with the Scholomance theme. I don’t expect to see it change anytime soon. We’ve heard explanations that they don’t have time to make new Brawls because of the focus on Mercenaries, and I’m sure that retheming a mode is more work than making one new Brawl.
To put it another way, I think a game mode has to be a runaway success like Battlegrounds or Constructed in order to justify ongoing attention. Duels is only worth it to Blizzard if they can leave it there without doing more work. I’m pretty sure I saw a quote along those lines for Meecenaries: They want to be sure Mercenaries can be played into the future without needing maintenance.
If you care about budget decks, you should absolutely follow what Old Guardian does. He usually makes a budget list with each expansion, and one of his accounts (which regularly goes to Legend) is dedicated to budget decks only. He has a blog, Twitch, and posts occasionally to r/CompetitiveHS.
When I was new to the game and struggling to find competitive decks I could afford, his advice may have been what kept me playing.
The reveal of the rewards track today was GREAT. I was mentally preparing myself to buy some of the great cosmetics in the patch notes, and they all turned out to be in the pass.
Plus, the OOC summary above skips one of the biggest pieces of news: We’re getting a Senna champion! That last level of the pass isn’t just an icon. You’ll also earn a champion card when Senna is released in the next explanation. I’ve been hoping for a Senna champion.
This is a cool idea, but I think it will be nothing but unfun auto-win decks before long. I played two games: First I lost to someone with LOCUUSTS!, and then I got the deck and used the same card to win. The card is effectively “Twinspell: Deal 14 face damage”, which is pretty hard to counter when you start with 20 health. But I know we’ll soon see plenty of decks that kill you before you even get to turn 7.
If you feel like being really sad today, just search for the full art and flavor text that go with this card.
And if you don’t feel like being sad? Just tell yourself that they chose to wrap up the card reveals with a cute animal who has nothing to do with the Ruination...
If there’s any company that knows how to profit off of cosmetic sales, it’s Riot. I don’t believe they’d put so much focus on the game if it’s first year hadn’t been successful. Right now, Runeterra seems to be at the forefront of their plans to expand the world and characters. Also, I can say that a solid majority of players I meet online have at least some paid cosmetics. I can’t tell exactly how much they’re making, but it’s not the failure that you might expect.
As for the difficulty of succeeding in this market: It’s true that there are a ton of failed CCGs, but the computer-based market is still pretty new. There are a lot of collectible games in meatspace that have been successful longer than Hearthstone has been around. The reason companies keep trying despite the failures is that there are enough big success stories to make it worthwhile.
FWIW, Runeterra seems to have proven itself. It’s been over a year since beta, and it’s still successful and growing (as far as I can tell). Of course, it helps that they have a large company and fantasy world behind them, and that they they’re trying to expand the world into multiple games and even shows.
Also, it truly is free to play. I understand that you may be more worried about the time and energy risk than money, but it’s still nice to know that you don’t have to put a penny into it until you’ve decided it’s worthwhile.
You’re thinking that you can summon the Warlord’s Palace early, and then only play Akshan when it’s time for the countdown to complete? That does sound pretty nice. I think he’ll be viable even without that trick, as the Palace will count down quickly with the right cards, but this is even better.
(Based on the wording of Akshan’s card, it doesn’t even sound like he has to see the Palace finish its countdown. As long as a countdown has finished, you may be able to play him and level up immediately.)
Those are some really powerful abilities… on a 5-cost unit that needs to stay on the board for a little while to level up. I’ll be curious to see how this works, but right now I have a hard time seeing this work fast enough.
I really want to see how the opening animation looks. My favorite is still the little scarab spreading its wings on the Uldum packs. Most recent packs have had a more generic “explode open” effect that wasn’t nearly as fun - Plus they keep using purple and gold splashes when they open, which is really misleading because it makes me think I’m getting an Epic or Legendary.
The lion on a seal could make for a really cool animation. (Even watching the ropes untie would be a fun change of pace.)
They give us a new free hero skin and your complaint is that they’re greedy for not giving us a better hero skin?
Yes, corporations are greedy and profit-driven. There are a lot of things I’d change about the structure of the world today. But I’m fine with a free game giving us more free stuff and a completely optional cosmetic purchase. Somehow, I don’t feel “squeezed“ at all.
Man, these are some good balance changes. I’m a bit nervous about restoring Miss Fortune’s Overwhelm (especially alongside a buff to her spell), and I dislike the idea of making Howling Abyss playable, but I can see the arguments for both. The only one of these changes I'd actually stop if I could would be the reduction to The Serpent’s attack.
For such a large list of changes, that’s an amazing success rate!
Yes, but it’s hard to tell what to make of that. When I hear “Slay the Spire”, my first impression is that you must be adding cards to a deck over multiple battles. That’s the core of the game to me. From what we know about Mercenaries, you level up heroes and then choose combinations of those heroes to use in encounters. That’s very different - maybe this has a similar map that you use to move through encounters, or a battle system where it tells you what your enemy’s next move will be, but if it isn’t a deck-builder it won’t feel like StS.
I’d LOVE a legit Slay the Spire-inspired game in Hearthstone, especially since that team has the designer who created DreamQuest. (i.e., the game that directly inspired StS.) But right now we mostly still have speculation. I feel like they are either dancing around how the game actually plays, or they somehow missed the fact that we don’t know. But whenever I look at the comments here or on Reddit, it’s clear that there is a lot of confusion out there. And if people’s expectations are being set for the wrong genre, then that’s going to be a problem when it launches.
I understand that Blizzard doesn’t want to tell us a lot about Mercenaries, but they have told us enough by now that they should have mentioned “This mode will be fun because _____” or “People who like ____ will also like this”. The good news is, since they haven’t given me a reason to look forward to it, I don’t have to be disappointed by the delays.
The main criticism around Lurk seems to be they people don’t see it triggering often enough. The buff is capped at one time per round, and you have to assume that on some of your rounds you won’t have a Lurk card on top of your deck. On some rounds you won’t even attack at all!
But these cards imply that Riot expects you to stack a lot of Lurk bonuses in a typical game. It will be interesting to see if that works out.
I’m not yet sold on Lurk - It could be strong now that Predict has some support, but it doesn’t feel amazing. However, it is a new thing that will be hard to visualize until I’ve tried it. (And remember, if a Lurker is on to of your deck, all Lurkers you attack with get an immediate buff. That makes it a little faster, but it’s still a significant build-around condition.)
I disagree about the value of Careful Preparation. You’re not just getting a mid-game mulligan - You get some control over what the replacement card will be. And you are guaranteed a second copy of the card next turn. This is great for anything that has synergy with itself, or that is so powerful you wish you could have a fourth copy in your deck. (Or any strategy that gives bonuses for Predictions or created cards.) I don’t think this card will be meta-defining, but I do expect it to find a place in some top decks.
The phrasing “I start a free attack” should mean that you can’t add any other units to the attack. So the Snapjaw Swarm is nice with attack synergies like Azir or Miss Fortune, but otherwise the card is entirely dependent on getting a few Lurk bonuses before it’s played. Do I have that right?
I love the idea of Hexite Crystals. That doesn’t seem like enough to make a Predict-based strategy work, but one more good card in the set could get it there. (Oh, and one more question. If something shuffled into your deck, then all cards’ order is changed, correct? That means that as soon as you’ve done one Prediction, your crystals are not necessarily on the bottom of your deck anymore.)
It’s not another auto-battler, but just like Battlegrounds it IS a big departure from traditional Hearthstone gameplay. We’re still waiting for an explanation of what this gameplay will be.
We had a season reset around the release of Barrens, but we still stuck with the Scholomance theme. I don’t expect to see it change anytime soon. We’ve heard explanations that they don’t have time to make new Brawls because of the focus on Mercenaries, and I’m sure that retheming a mode is more work than making one new Brawl.
To put it another way, I think a game mode has to be a runaway success like Battlegrounds or Constructed in order to justify ongoing attention. Duels is only worth it to Blizzard if they can leave it there without doing more work. I’m pretty sure I saw a quote along those lines for Meecenaries: They want to be sure Mercenaries can be played into the future without needing maintenance.
If you care about budget decks, you should absolutely follow what Old Guardian does. He usually makes a budget list with each expansion, and one of his accounts (which regularly goes to Legend) is dedicated to budget decks only. He has a blog, Twitch, and posts occasionally to r/CompetitiveHS.
When I was new to the game and struggling to find competitive decks I could afford, his advice may have been what kept me playing.
The reveal of the rewards track today was GREAT. I was mentally preparing myself to buy some of the great cosmetics in the patch notes, and they all turned out to be in the pass.
Plus, the OOC summary above skips one of the biggest pieces of news: We’re getting a Senna champion! That last level of the pass isn’t just an icon. You’ll also earn a champion card when Senna is released in the next explanation. I’ve been hoping for a Senna champion.
This is a cool idea, but I think it will be nothing but unfun auto-win decks before long. I played two games: First I lost to someone with LOCUUSTS!, and then I got the deck and used the same card to win. The card is effectively “Twinspell: Deal 14 face damage”, which is pretty hard to counter when you start with 20 health. But I know we’ll soon see plenty of decks that kill you before you even get to turn 7.
If you feel like being really sad today, just search for the full art and flavor text that go with this card.
And if you don’t feel like being sad? Just tell yourself that they chose to wrap up the card reveals with a cute animal who has nothing to do with the Ruination...
If there’s any company that knows how to profit off of cosmetic sales, it’s Riot. I don’t believe they’d put so much focus on the game if it’s first year hadn’t been successful. Right now, Runeterra seems to be at the forefront of their plans to expand the world and characters. Also, I can say that a solid majority of players I meet online have at least some paid cosmetics. I can’t tell exactly how much they’re making, but it’s not the failure that you might expect.
As for the difficulty of succeeding in this market: It’s true that there are a ton of failed CCGs, but the computer-based market is still pretty new. There are a lot of collectible games in meatspace that have been successful longer than Hearthstone has been around. The reason companies keep trying despite the failures is that there are enough big success stories to make it worthwhile.
FWIW, Runeterra seems to have proven itself. It’s been over a year since beta, and it’s still successful and growing (as far as I can tell). Of course, it helps that they have a large company and fantasy world behind them, and that they they’re trying to expand the world into multiple games and even shows.
Also, it truly is free to play. I understand that you may be more worried about the time and energy risk than money, but it’s still nice to know that you don’t have to put a penny into it until you’ve decided it’s worthwhile.
My hopes for a Riven-Akshan deck may be realistic after all.
You’re thinking that you can summon the Warlord’s Palace early, and then only play Akshan when it’s time for the countdown to complete? That does sound pretty nice. I think he’ll be viable even without that trick, as the Palace will count down quickly with the right cards, but this is even better.
(Based on the wording of Akshan’s card, it doesn’t even sound like he has to see the Palace finish its countdown. As long as a countdown has finished, you may be able to play him and level up immediately.)
Those are some really powerful abilities… on a 5-cost unit that needs to stay on the board for a little while to level up. I’ll be curious to see how this works, but right now I have a hard time seeing this work fast enough.
“Card reveals will continue until July 14.” Wow, I wonder how many cards will be in this event total.
I really want to see how the opening animation looks. My favorite is still the little scarab spreading its wings on the Uldum packs. Most recent packs have had a more generic “explode open” effect that wasn’t nearly as fun - Plus they keep using purple and gold splashes when they open, which is really misleading because it makes me think I’m getting an Epic or Legendary.
The lion on a seal could make for a really cool animation. (Even watching the ropes untie would be a fun change of pace.)
They give us a new free hero skin and your complaint is that they’re greedy for not giving us a better hero skin?
Yes, corporations are greedy and profit-driven. There are a lot of things I’d change about the structure of the world today. But I’m fine with a free game giving us more free stuff and a completely optional cosmetic purchase. Somehow, I don’t feel “squeezed“ at all.
Man, these are some good balance changes. I’m a bit nervous about restoring Miss Fortune’s Overwhelm (especially alongside a buff to her spell), and I dislike the idea of making Howling Abyss playable, but I can see the arguments for both. The only one of these changes I'd actually stop if I could would be the reduction to The Serpent’s attack.
For such a large list of changes, that’s an amazing success rate!
Yes, but it’s hard to tell what to make of that. When I hear “Slay the Spire”, my first impression is that you must be adding cards to a deck over multiple battles. That’s the core of the game to me. From what we know about Mercenaries, you level up heroes and then choose combinations of those heroes to use in encounters. That’s very different - maybe this has a similar map that you use to move through encounters, or a battle system where it tells you what your enemy’s next move will be, but if it isn’t a deck-builder it won’t feel like StS.
I’d LOVE a legit Slay the Spire-inspired game in Hearthstone, especially since that team has the designer who created DreamQuest. (i.e., the game that directly inspired StS.) But right now we mostly still have speculation. I feel like they are either dancing around how the game actually plays, or they somehow missed the fact that we don’t know. But whenever I look at the comments here or on Reddit, it’s clear that there is a lot of confusion out there. And if people’s expectations are being set for the wrong genre, then that’s going to be a problem when it launches.
I understand that Blizzard doesn’t want to tell us a lot about Mercenaries, but they have told us enough by now that they should have mentioned “This mode will be fun because _____” or “People who like ____ will also like this”. The good news is, since they haven’t given me a reason to look forward to it, I don’t have to be disappointed by the delays.
The main criticism around Lurk seems to be they people don’t see it triggering often enough. The buff is capped at one time per round, and you have to assume that on some of your rounds you won’t have a Lurk card on top of your deck. On some rounds you won’t even attack at all!
But these cards imply that Riot expects you to stack a lot of Lurk bonuses in a typical game. It will be interesting to see if that works out.
I’m not yet sold on Lurk - It could be strong now that Predict has some support, but it doesn’t feel amazing. However, it is a new thing that will be hard to visualize until I’ve tried it. (And remember, if a Lurker is on to of your deck, all Lurkers you attack with get an immediate buff. That makes it a little faster, but it’s still a significant build-around condition.)
I disagree about the value of Careful Preparation. You’re not just getting a mid-game mulligan - You get some control over what the replacement card will be. And you are guaranteed a second copy of the card next turn. This is great for anything that has synergy with itself, or that is so powerful you wish you could have a fourth copy in your deck. (Or any strategy that gives bonuses for Predictions or created cards.) I don’t think this card will be meta-defining, but I do expect it to find a place in some top decks.
The phrasing “I start a free attack” should mean that you can’t add any other units to the attack. So the Snapjaw Swarm is nice with attack synergies like Azir or Miss Fortune, but otherwise the card is entirely dependent on getting a few Lurk bonuses before it’s played. Do I have that right?
I love the idea of Hexite Crystals. That doesn’t seem like enough to make a Predict-based strategy work, but one more good card in the set could get it there. (Oh, and one more question. If something shuffled into your deck, then all cards’ order is changed, correct? That means that as soon as you’ve done one Prediction, your crystals are not necessarily on the bottom of your deck anymore.)
It’s not another auto-battler, but just like Battlegrounds it IS a big departure from traditional Hearthstone gameplay. We’re still waiting for an explanation of what this gameplay will be.