My prediction: Blizzard is testing how far they can go, that is pretty obvious. Due to the backlash they will backtrack and improve the system (not to the previous level though), then issue a statement how sorry they are and how much they listen to player feedback (bla bla bla) and that they therefore have decided to improve the system. The improvement however will not be enough to reach the previous level. And then discussions will die down until the next time.
I am pretty pissed off right now, especially as I bought the pass on launch day (believed them that everything will be fine). Not ready to quit HS yet but I have decided to go full F2P for the foreseeable future. No longer paying money for this game is the only language they understand.
P.S. Also the timing of the release and lack of information before borders on insolence. They clearly timed this to not hurt the DF pre-sales, which tells us that they were fully aware of the fact that players will be worse off. I would go so far to say that some statements they made were on the border of intentional lies.
I'm at level 16 with boost. The first levels were a breeze but then it started to scale. If this continues (which I fully expect) it will be a hell of a grind. Initially I thought the new track might turn out to be good, but after a couple of days I begin to feel disappointed. The main points which piss me off so far:
XP for achievements is a joke, way too low for way too much time investment (plus some requiring certain cards)
No XP for Arena and some other modes (feels bad if Arena is one of your main game modes)
Being punished for being a casual player (no I dont play one hour per day on average, I have a real life)
Getting useless old packs instead of gold (ever heard of player agency Blizz?)
And last but not least the way Blizzard thinks they can handle the situation, the lack of transparency and all the so far unfounded promises. I initially believed them when they said that nobody will lose. Not anymore. As somebody who works in the service industry myself I can tell you that you should not treat your customers like this. That said I am not ready to quit HS yet but I am certainly closer to it than ever.
Stupid Rez Priest again. I guess you can safely say it is the single most hated archetype in HS. Why Blizzard? The least they could have done would have to print a proper new neutral tech card to counter this archetype, but no.
No really OP cards out there currently imo. Dimir Rogues is the most annoying deck right now, not because the deck is super strong but because you can run into it five times in a row. Also I don't like the archetype but thats just me probably. Drown in the Loch would be me favorite for a ban. The other card enabling this deck is Soaring Thought Thief.
I personally don't care about Bonecrusher Giant. If they want to ban a red card I say Embercleave please. But I guess we are past that point.
That said I don't think bans are really necessary currently.
Its a decent card and a really good addition to control DH (if this should be a thing). I would probably include this into any non-aggro DH deck. You are all too focused on the combo potential (too clunky), in my opinion this is a control value card and not a combo enabler in the first place.
I think this thread got lost a bit due to the card reveals starting. I have no experience with community management so I can't say much on the topic itself. Just wanted to say thank you. Your ideas sound pretty neat. Regarding implementation I would start slowly and run a pilot project on a single idea or so. Based on feedback and site statistics this could be expanded then (or not).
Okay blizz/HS team, what were they smoking? Because this card is OP AF. Arcane Keysmith was pretty much must include in WILD secret mage and highlander mage, and Ring Toss is powercreeped version of Arcane Keysmith, and Ring Toss is a spell, meaning it gets generated a lot. WAIT IT'S ALSO A CORRUPTION CARD! This means that Y'Shaarj, the Defiler gives you the corrupted version for free... so it's 10 mana get a lot of free cards, and 4+ free secrets if you played at least 2 corrupted copies of Ring Toss... oh no...
Wild: "AHH sheet, here we go again." Secret mage will probably dominate in the meta again, all because of Ring Toss replaces Arcane Keysmith. Okay it might be hard for secret mage to corrupt it, but it might fill the role of a reload card, so you get more secrets after using a Cloud Prince. It will also see play in highlander and OTK mage decks, because this just increases the odds of getting Ice Block even more times.
When you open a lot of Ring Tosses, don't dust them. Because this will surely get nerfed. Even at 5 mana it will see a lot of play, and it will still be considered a must include...
My comment refers to Wild. I think you overestimate the usefulness of this card especially in Secret Mage. The obvious comparion is Arcane Keysmith which is not an auto-include in secret mage deck lists. My Secret Mage does not run it and probably won't run Ring Toss either. The corrupt will be difficult to pull off due the low mana curve (Aluneth is the highest cost card). In Highlander Mage this is far better and will probably be run, but I don't see this as OP.
Not hopeless but right now this card seems to clunky for ranked play. Good arena card however. I asked myself if I would slot this into my wild Mech Hunter deck and the answer is no. The cost is too high, at a lower mana cost with a similar effect this would be pretty much an auto-include though.
It really is a low reward, almost embarassing. Especially when compared to HS or MTGA. HS gave Golden Packs and MTGA even gave an entire 60 card deck at one time. But I guess you don't complain if its free (if you happen to already have an account).
Quality over quantity was already mentioned above. Let me put it this way: HP is like junk food, it gets you filled but not satisfied, wheras OoC is like Fine Dining, which is made with love and you can enjoy it around pleasant people. I used to read HP previously, but the overall climate was not that nice (although I am sure the mods did their best to prevent the worst stuff). So I transferred once I learned that there was some other site. That said I am sure that OoC will grow, over the long-term quality will prevail especially as this site is more diversified.
Addition: To answer the question why HP is more popular (despite its relative shortcomings): It is simply longer around and already entrenched (in business you call this first mover advantage); people know it and stick to it
Many thanks for sharing and your work (Neoguli). I must admit I like this quite a bit more than the previous iteration on DH / Hunter.
Some points that come to my mind:
Sanctuary Angel: I like the card, it seems balanced and flavorful (maybe we could even make some more Angel cards and introduce an Angel tribe; that would seem fitting for Priest and to a lesser extent for Paladin)
Seashore Guide: Shaman should really be the primary Murloc class, I always found it slightly weird that they pushed Murlocs into Paladin; the card itself though probably needs to be tuned down a bit (like +1 ATK or Health only); it is really snowbally right now
Tornado: I get the design idea (which is fine) but as you said you should stay away from this one; the text is too confusing currently and the overall mana cost seems excessive
Reviving Infusion: The card is fine probably; but in my personal opinion no more revive effects should be printed unless they decide to introduce some sort of graveyard mechanic; furthermore Rez Prist is a pretty controversial archetype and I am not sure if it is really a good idea to push Priest further in this direction
Just my two cents. Again really appreciate your work (Neoguli). Keep it up.
As far as I remember, the rarities are locked in when buying a pack, but the cards themselves are created when the pack is opened, so yeah, it's a good thing to wait.
This seems like a really pointless thing for them to do. It requires using memory somewhere to store these rarities, sometimes for lots of packs for a significant length of time (e.g. for about a month with pre-order bundles), all the while there's a chance the data gets lost or corrupted. It surely takes much less CPU time to generate 5 rarities than to choose the cards to fill them, so I cannot think of any benefit to generating them at the time of purchase rather than at the time of opening.
Someone please tell me if I've missed something here, because as it stands this choice annoys my programmer's mind more than any bad card design issue.
I am not an IT expert but I think the amount of storage / processing power it takes to store the rarities (not cards) upon purchase is negligible. I can't think of an advantage this has though. Maybe a legal reason? They are advertsing the rarities and in some countries HS falls under gambling laws. Can't think of any other possible reason.
Ben Brode confirmed that pack contents are determined when opened, but that was a couple of years ago. They might have changed it in the mean time. I guess saving the packs until next expansion works, but nobody outside of Blizz can probably confirm this for sure.
I am pretty relaxed. Lets just wait and see. I hope it will be fine, if not and the new system is much worse than the current one I will simply stop playing HS. After all there are a lot of other games around.
My prediction: Blizzard is testing how far they can go, that is pretty obvious. Due to the backlash they will backtrack and improve the system (not to the previous level though), then issue a statement how sorry they are and how much they listen to player feedback (bla bla bla) and that they therefore have decided to improve the system. The improvement however will not be enough to reach the previous level. And then discussions will die down until the next time.
I am pretty pissed off right now, especially as I bought the pass on launch day (believed them that everything will be fine). Not ready to quit HS yet but I have decided to go full F2P for the foreseeable future. No longer paying money for this game is the only language they understand.
P.S. Also the timing of the release and lack of information before borders on insolence. They clearly timed this to not hurt the DF pre-sales, which tells us that they were fully aware of the fact that players will be worse off. I would go so far to say that some statements they made were on the border of intentional lies.
I'm at level 16 with boost. The first levels were a breeze but then it started to scale. If this continues (which I fully expect) it will be a hell of a grind. Initially I thought the new track might turn out to be good, but after a couple of days I begin to feel disappointed. The main points which piss me off so far:
And last but not least the way Blizzard thinks they can handle the situation, the lack of transparency and all the so far unfounded promises. I initially believed them when they said that nobody will lose. Not anymore. As somebody who works in the service industry myself I can tell you that you should not treat your customers like this. That said I am not ready to quit HS yet but I am certainly closer to it than ever.
Stupid Rez Priest again. I guess you can safely say it is the single most hated archetype in HS. Why Blizzard? The least they could have done would have to print a proper new neutral tech card to counter this archetype, but no.
N'Zoth, God of the Deep and Malevolent Strike. I wanted to craft him anyways, so that was nice
Seems interesting, but I will stick to standard. Building a standard and a historic collection is a bit much imo.
No really OP cards out there currently imo. Dimir Rogues is the most annoying deck right now, not because the deck is super strong but because you can run into it five times in a row. Also I don't like the archetype but thats just me probably. Drown in the Loch would be me favorite for a ban. The other card enabling this deck is Soaring Thought Thief.
I personally don't care about Bonecrusher Giant. If they want to ban a red card I say Embercleave please. But I guess we are past that point.
That said I don't think bans are really necessary currently.
Its a decent card and a really good addition to control DH (if this should be a thing). I would probably include this into any non-aggro DH deck. You are all too focused on the combo potential (too clunky), in my opinion this is a control value card and not a combo enabler in the first place.
I think this thread got lost a bit due to the card reveals starting. I have no experience with community management so I can't say much on the topic itself. Just wanted to say thank you. Your ideas sound pretty neat. Regarding implementation I would start slowly and run a pilot project on a single idea or so. Based on feedback and site statistics this could be expanded then (or not).
Awful design, might seem like fun now but greatly limits design space in the future.
My comment refers to Wild. I think you overestimate the usefulness of this card especially in Secret Mage. The obvious comparion is Arcane Keysmith which is not an auto-include in secret mage deck lists. My Secret Mage does not run it and probably won't run Ring Toss either. The corrupt will be difficult to pull off due the low mana curve (Aluneth is the highest cost card). In Highlander Mage this is far better and will probably be run, but I don't see this as OP.
Not hopeless but right now this card seems to clunky for ranked play. Good arena card however. I asked myself if I would slot this into my wild Mech Hunter deck and the answer is no. The cost is too high, at a lower mana cost with a similar effect this would be pretty much an auto-include though.
If something like a Big Hunter becomes viable then this might be a thing. But that would need a lot of support, so probably this card wont see play.
It really is a low reward, almost embarassing. Especially when compared to HS or MTGA. HS gave Golden Packs and MTGA even gave an entire 60 card deck at one time. But I guess you don't complain if its free (if you happen to already have an account).
Quality over quantity was already mentioned above. Let me put it this way: HP is like junk food, it gets you filled but not satisfied, wheras OoC is like Fine Dining, which is made with love and you can enjoy it around pleasant people. I used to read HP previously, but the overall climate was not that nice (although I am sure the mods did their best to prevent the worst stuff). So I transferred once I learned that there was some other site. That said I am sure that OoC will grow, over the long-term quality will prevail especially as this site is more diversified.
Addition: To answer the question why HP is more popular (despite its relative shortcomings): It is simply longer around and already entrenched (in business you call this first mover advantage); people know it and stick to it
Many thanks for sharing and your work (Neoguli). I must admit I like this quite a bit more than the previous iteration on DH / Hunter.
Some points that come to my mind:
Just my two cents. Again really appreciate your work (Neoguli). Keep it up.
I am not an IT expert but I think the amount of storage / processing power it takes to store the rarities (not cards) upon purchase is negligible. I can't think of an advantage this has though. Maybe a legal reason? They are advertsing the rarities and in some countries HS falls under gambling laws. Can't think of any other possible reason.
Ben Brode confirmed that pack contents are determined when opened, but that was a couple of years ago. They might have changed it in the mean time. I guess saving the packs until next expansion works, but nobody outside of Blizz can probably confirm this for sure.
I am pretty relaxed. Lets just wait and see. I hope it will be fine, if not and the new system is much worse than the current one I will simply stop playing HS. After all there are a lot of other games around.
They should really do this on a regular basis
That was pretty fast :)