It's ultimately about adding value to GamePass, isn't it? I'd subscribe to GamePass if it would give me a full HS collection to play with. I don't think there is much overlap between HS and CoD players, so having both in their portfolio would help them reach a larger audience.
I play since Open Beta have all cards I need, have a few k gold and over 100.000 dust. The game became 100% free to play for me since years.
You must be putting in a lot of hours to get that many resources. That's fine if you're enjoying it, but some people either don't have the time or do not enjoy playing long stretches and for them changes in the economy hit a lot harder.
Negative changes to quests, real money offers and pre order nonsense don`t bother me.
Pre-order exclusives could put F2P ladder players at a disadvantage. Last expansion they selected an unplayable card, but that might not be the case next time.
HS is much more generous than in the early days. Most players seem to have forgotten this or haven't been playing the game long enough.
On the one hand, players get much more free stuff now, the core set is free and duplicate protection helps a ton. On the other hand, there are now 11 classes instead of 9, two legendaries per class per expansion instead of one (*) and a mini set every expansion, plus a larger percentage of cards is actually playable due to better balance, so a lot more cards to acquire. As a result, while you get more game for your buck, staying up-to-date hasn't become cheaper.
(*) If I recall correctly, they started doing this with Un'goro because of the quests, but they never went back to one legendary per class after that. Yeah, I've been around since open beta too.
But it's definitely not so bad that you have to stop playing because of it.
For any of the listed items individually, I'd call quitting an over-reaction. But all of this happened in the time span of a few months and there was very little positive news to counter-balance it (unless you play Battlegrounds, I guess). And I don't see any reason to assume this trend of ever more aggressive monetization is going to stop here.
I had hoped that with the acquisition completed, they would be under less pressure to monetize, but things have only gotten worse since then.
The more I think about it, the more it becomes clear that quitting the game is the right choice for me. For the last two years or so, I've spent 40 euros per expansion: the Tavern Pass plus a bundle with 20 packs and 2 legendaries. I don't play the game enough to make it feel worth putting more money in and I don't want to play more because I'd just get fed up with the meta sooner then.
I could probably continue as F2P for one more expansion cycle, disenchanting my duplicates and cashing in my tavern tickets, but in the long run it would become too expensive to keep playing the way I want to. Maybe I could afford one competitive deck as F2P, but I'd be bored in no time if I could play only one deck. Deck building is my favorite part of the game and that requires a pretty wide collection. So F2P is not a long term option for me.
I'm not sure I even want to finish the current Tavern Pass. I haven't played since Wednesday, when I logged in to do the Tavern Brawl and the daily quests that had piled up since Sunday, only to see the new weekly quests. Once I realized those were not a bug, I logged out without playing a game. Knowing that there is no future for me in this game has killed a lot of my motivation to log in and play.
It all feels planned: first triple the requirements for +20% XP, then bring it down to double (*) but still only give +20% XP. Make it sound like they caved in to community backlash while still significantly worsening the economy for many players.
In itself this wouldn't be enough to make me quit, but it's part of an overall trend to monetize ever more aggressively. Back when it was only cosmetic, I would roll my eyes and move on, but now it's starting to affect how much money it costs to build a decent collection. I'm not interested in playing more and I don't want to pay more for the amount of time that I am playing the game. It seems they're on a course to make the game too expensive for me and if I'll be forced to quit anyway in the not too distant future, I might as well quit now and save myself some frustration.
(*) They haven't announced the new requirements, just said that they will be between the old and the current amounts. I have a gut feeling it will be right in the middle, but that is just a guess at this point. Edit: The new numbers differ per quest, but on average they indeed roughly doubled compared to the old situation, for example 5 wins -> 15 wins -> 10 wins.
There is no way I can complete these in one week. With the old weekly quests I already didn't always manage to complete them before the week ended.
I'm seriously considering whether I should quit the game. I don't like the feeling of being squeezed for money. And there are plenty of other good games to play.
I guess I'll stop playing until they roll it back; ultimately the people responsible for monetization probably care more about seeing the numbers drop than about any other form of protest.
They wanted to reduce the power level of the deck a bit and I think it will do that: one extra turn is all that some combo decks might need. Personally, I don't think decks that do nothing but stall until they find their win condition are fun and interactive. However, it seems Team 5's goal was to lower the win rate a bit, not to force the deck to be redesigned or retired.
I think the fact that its benefit comes relatively late in the game was the main thing holding it back. That might still be the case at 5 mana, but if it was a 1-mana 1/1 with the same battlecry, I think it would see a lot of play.
For me it's an improvement as well, because I don't go out of my way to complete the achievements, which means it often takes a lot longer than one expansion cycle to complete them. However, for the achievement hunters there is now a lot less total dust to collect, so for them it's a negative.
Rarity and gold seem to matter, with gold mattering a whole lot more, even more than in actual Hearthstone's dust value. The total pack value might be some kind of multiplication rather than addition, because a lone golden legendary isn't enough to get a really high score, but in the company of some golden cards of lower rarities the point value skyrockets.
I don't know. I mostly face the non-highlander variant myself, but it's very frustrating to play against, since it's just turn after turn of you putting something on the board and them wiping it off the board. In the old days you could eventually run them out of removal, but that is very difficult with the amount of card draw of today combined with Odyn, Prime Designate as a single-card win condition (thus having fewer draws that are not removal).
While I don't miss the days when a turn 1 Mana Wyrm or a strong Murloc opener would snowball the game, we've now gone to the other extreme, where it's rare for a minion to survive a turn.
I'm not surprised that Sludge Warlock is getting hit: I've been playing my own list (mixed in some discard stuff) which is likely sub-optimal, but it still felt very powerful.
Somehow I barely run into Sludge Warlock on EU ladder; Control Warrior and Plague DK seem to be much more popular.
I'm not complaining about the cosmetics; I even said in my original post that I'm fine with it. But I do spot a trend of ever more items for purchase being added to the game and often at pretty high price levels, which makes me think they're under pressure to bring in more money. Especially as they're cutting costs at the same time, with layoffs and cancelling Duels.
It's a common misunderstanding that companies exist to make profit. Companies exist to provide goods and services. They have to make a profit to continue to exist, but that doesn't make it their purpose.
I'm not even a F2P player: I typically buy the Tavern Pass and a cheap bundle each season. However, those purchases always felt optional. I just really dislike being pressured into buying something. And with games like Diablo Immortal being straight up pay-to-win and games like Marvel Snap putting you permanently behind the meta if you don't pay, I don't think it's strange to be worried about the future of Hearthstone.
It wasn't possible to pre-order minisets in the past, but they could easily introduce that, as they already have the required infrastructure. I will admit they probably wouldn't do a 5-week release cycle for a miniset, so maybe 50% is not realistic, but if they run miniset pre-orders for two weeks, pre-order periods would end up spanning 40% of the year.
The point is, they seem to be increasingly desperate for more monetization: signature cards, the ridiculously expensive diamond cards and skins, adding skins to Heroic Brawl etc. While Corridor Sleeper is unlikely to break the meta, they have shown that there is no hard boundary preventing them from introducing paid exclusives that could have game play impact on Standard. I'm worried what this means for the future of the game.
They're exclusive for 5 weeks. If they do this for every expansion, that's 15 weeks per year, or about 30% of the time. If they'd do it for minisets as well, the exclusivity period could go up to or over 50%.
It's ultimately about adding value to GamePass, isn't it? I'd subscribe to GamePass if it would give me a full HS collection to play with. I don't think there is much overlap between HS and CoD players, so having both in their portfolio would help them reach a larger audience.
You must be putting in a lot of hours to get that many resources. That's fine if you're enjoying it, but some people either don't have the time or do not enjoy playing long stretches and for them changes in the economy hit a lot harder.
Pre-order exclusives could put F2P ladder players at a disadvantage. Last expansion they selected an unplayable card, but that might not be the case next time.
On the one hand, players get much more free stuff now, the core set is free and duplicate protection helps a ton. On the other hand, there are now 11 classes instead of 9, two legendaries per class per expansion instead of one (*) and a mini set every expansion, plus a larger percentage of cards is actually playable due to better balance, so a lot more cards to acquire. As a result, while you get more game for your buck, staying up-to-date hasn't become cheaper.
(*) If I recall correctly, they started doing this with Un'goro because of the quests, but they never went back to one legendary per class after that. Yeah, I've been around since open beta too.
For any of the listed items individually, I'd call quitting an over-reaction. But all of this happened in the time span of a few months and there was very little positive news to counter-balance it (unless you play Battlegrounds, I guess). And I don't see any reason to assume this trend of ever more aggressive monetization is going to stop here.
I had hoped that with the acquisition completed, they would be under less pressure to monetize, but things have only gotten worse since then.
The more I think about it, the more it becomes clear that quitting the game is the right choice for me. For the last two years or so, I've spent 40 euros per expansion: the Tavern Pass plus a bundle with 20 packs and 2 legendaries. I don't play the game enough to make it feel worth putting more money in and I don't want to play more because I'd just get fed up with the meta sooner then.
I could probably continue as F2P for one more expansion cycle, disenchanting my duplicates and cashing in my tavern tickets, but in the long run it would become too expensive to keep playing the way I want to. Maybe I could afford one competitive deck as F2P, but I'd be bored in no time if I could play only one deck. Deck building is my favorite part of the game and that requires a pretty wide collection. So F2P is not a long term option for me.
I'm not sure I even want to finish the current Tavern Pass. I haven't played since Wednesday, when I logged in to do the Tavern Brawl and the daily quests that had piled up since Sunday, only to see the new weekly quests. Once I realized those were not a bug, I logged out without playing a game. Knowing that there is no future for me in this game has killed a lot of my motivation to log in and play.
It all feels planned: first triple the requirements for +20% XP, then bring it down to double (*) but still only give +20% XP. Make it sound like they caved in to community backlash while still significantly worsening the economy for many players.
In itself this wouldn't be enough to make me quit, but it's part of an overall trend to monetize ever more aggressively. Back when it was only cosmetic, I would roll my eyes and move on, but now it's starting to affect how much money it costs to build a decent collection. I'm not interested in playing more and I don't want to pay more for the amount of time that I am playing the game. It seems they're on a course to make the game too expensive for me and if I'll be forced to quit anyway in the not too distant future, I might as well quit now and save myself some frustration.
(*) They haven't announced the new requirements, just said that they will be between the old and the current amounts. I have a gut feeling it will be right in the middle, but that is just a guess at this point. Edit: The new numbers differ per quest, but on average they indeed roughly doubled compared to the old situation, for example 5 wins -> 15 wins -> 10 wins.
There is no way I can complete these in one week. With the old weekly quests I already didn't always manage to complete them before the week ended.
I'm seriously considering whether I should quit the game. I don't like the feeling of being squeezed for money. And there are plenty of other good games to play.
I guess I'll stop playing until they roll it back; ultimately the people responsible for monetization probably care more about seeing the numbers drop than about any other form of protest.
New year, new deck:
Unstable Evolution on the Charge side is very nice, since every transformed minion gets to attack immediately.
They wanted to reduce the power level of the deck a bit and I think it will do that: one extra turn is all that some combo decks might need. Personally, I don't think decks that do nothing but stall until they find their win condition are fun and interactive. However, it seems Team 5's goal was to lower the win rate a bit, not to force the deck to be redesigned or retired.
I think the fact that its benefit comes relatively late in the game was the main thing holding it back. That might still be the case at 5 mana, but if it was a 1-mana 1/1 with the same battlecry, I think it would see a lot of play.
Congrats to the winners.
My favorite is Lolo from Eggerland Mystery / Adventures of Lolo:
For me it's an improvement as well, because I don't go out of my way to complete the achievements, which means it often takes a lot longer than one expansion cycle to complete them. However, for the achievement hunters there is now a lot less total dust to collect, so for them it's a negative.
Rarity and gold seem to matter, with gold mattering a whole lot more, even more than in actual Hearthstone's dust value. The total pack value might be some kind of multiplication rather than addition, because a lone golden legendary isn't enough to get a really high score, but in the company of some golden cards of lower rarities the point value skyrockets.
In particular I stopped playing highlander decks, because Helya on turn 4 means your highlander cards are never going to be active.
I don't know. I mostly face the non-highlander variant myself, but it's very frustrating to play against, since it's just turn after turn of you putting something on the board and them wiping it off the board. In the old days you could eventually run them out of removal, but that is very difficult with the amount of card draw of today combined with Odyn, Prime Designate as a single-card win condition (thus having fewer draws that are not removal).
While I don't miss the days when a turn 1 Mana Wyrm or a strong Murloc opener would snowball the game, we've now gone to the other extreme, where it's rare for a minion to survive a turn.
So the Standard nerfs will be:
I'm not surprised that Sludge Warlock is getting hit: I've been playing my own list (mixed in some discard stuff) which is likely sub-optimal, but it still felt very powerful.
Somehow I barely run into Sludge Warlock on EU ladder; Control Warrior and Plague DK seem to be much more popular.
I'm not complaining about the cosmetics; I even said in my original post that I'm fine with it. But I do spot a trend of ever more items for purchase being added to the game and often at pretty high price levels, which makes me think they're under pressure to bring in more money. Especially as they're cutting costs at the same time, with layoffs and cancelling Duels.
It's a common misunderstanding that companies exist to make profit. Companies exist to provide goods and services. They have to make a profit to continue to exist, but that doesn't make it their purpose.
I'm not even a F2P player: I typically buy the Tavern Pass and a cheap bundle each season. However, those purchases always felt optional. I just really dislike being pressured into buying something. And with games like Diablo Immortal being straight up pay-to-win and games like Marvel Snap putting you permanently behind the meta if you don't pay, I don't think it's strange to be worried about the future of Hearthstone.
It wasn't possible to pre-order minisets in the past, but they could easily introduce that, as they already have the required infrastructure. I will admit they probably wouldn't do a 5-week release cycle for a miniset, so maybe 50% is not realistic, but if they run miniset pre-orders for two weeks, pre-order periods would end up spanning 40% of the year.
The point is, they seem to be increasingly desperate for more monetization: signature cards, the ridiculously expensive diamond cards and skins, adding skins to Heroic Brawl etc. While Corridor Sleeper is unlikely to break the meta, they have shown that there is no hard boundary preventing them from introducing paid exclusives that could have game play impact on Standard. I'm worried what this means for the future of the game.
They're exclusive for 5 weeks. If they do this for every expansion, that's 15 weeks per year, or about 30% of the time. If they'd do it for minisets as well, the exclusivity period could go up to or over 50%.
Maybe another hidden puzzle? Labyrinth does sound like a fitting reward for people who like searching for secrets.