So do you want fewer cards?
[PC Game] Hearthstone (Practically Beta)
- Thread starter Ravenpoe
- Start date
Think of what the game would be like if it were like Overwatch or Path of Exile, where everything you purchase only affects how you LOOK, and doesn't really affect actual gameplay.
Or think of what Hearthstone would be like if you could buy an entire SET at a time. Not packs, but an entire set of 1xLeg + 2xEverythingElse. How much money do you think Blizzard would collect if purchasing every expansion could be one-and-done? A lot less, that's for sure. Also the incentive to play to pay to play would be nonexistent.
--Patrick
figmentPez
Staff member
I'm fine with the current amount of cards coming out. I don't see a big difference between an adventure and an expansion comes out when it comes to play a month after the release. The only difference for me is that I have more fun when an adventure comes out.
If fewer cards means more cards that more relevant and get balanced more often, I'd be all for it.
I'm hoping that Blizzard will give out enough freebies to lessen the sting of having to spend more gold to get the same amount of impactful cards. Daily log in bonuses and other stuff may b
And don't anyone give me the bullshit of "but you can build one ladder deck for cheap", no.... I don't want to play one class over and over and over again, climbing ladder. I want to play all classes, and have enough cards to enjoy Brawls, and just have fun playing. I'm not a ladder climber, I just want to play a fun card game. Which is what Hearthstone has been, and I'm worried it won't be if I fall too far behind in card collecting.
figmentPez
Staff member
And I just realized one of Hearthstone's problems. Why do you see the same decks over and over on ladder with so little experimentation? Because there are a lot of players out there who have a limited card collection, with a limited amount of dust to craft with, who are crafting just the cards they need to make the meta decks, and they don't have a lot of other cards to experiment with. Hearthstone is kind of shooting itself in the foot in terms of diversity by making it hard to get a broad collection of cards.
They said they're doing this leading up to and around the release of Mammoth.
The adventures on the side may be a way to still get certain key cards, the way buying an Old Gods pack guaranteed you a C'thun. But maybe not; I read that they intend to make these new adventures harder than the past ones.
In other news ...
Arena is now turning to standard. I get the philosophy there, and maybe it'll improve things for someone like me who sucks at Arena, but it feels like a not-great idea. That said, they're also planning to change the percentages so people drafting Arena decks are more likely to get epics and legendaries, and class-based cards too.
Gold cost of an adventure that gives you 45 cards = 2800
2800 gold could also get you 28 packs, which is 140 cards.
Now while in the latter form no cards are guaranteed as they are in adventures, not everyone can save or make enough to get to the 2800. But any one pack could give you any particular card.
Obviously Blizz crunched the numbers from the last couple years and determined that pack-gambling was more lucrative, but this isn't net loss to players, it's a shift in card gaining.
2800 gold could also get you 28 packs, which is 140 cards.
Now while in the latter form no cards are guaranteed as they are in adventures, not everyone can save or make enough to get to the 2800. But any one pack could give you any particular card.
Obviously Blizz crunched the numbers from the last couple years and determined that pack-gambling was more lucrative, but this isn't net loss to players, it's a shift in card gaining.
figmentPez
Staff member
I'm about to head out the door, so I'll do better math later, but your reasoning is flawed. Not all cards are created equal. Those cards from the adventure include multiple legendary cards. You're not even guaranteed to get a single legendary from 28 packs. Dust value would be more telling than simple card count.
Pity counter is 20 packs.
As for usual dust per pack, for my wife, 100 dust. For me, 40 dust
Can't remember if the pity counter is 40 or 50.
My estimate for the average number of packs (14) you would have to dust to get 1600+ dust was based on the statistical probability of getting each card type.
--Patrick
figmentPez
Staff member
The after the credit bit (starts at 3:57) is hilarious:
When my husband (Zero Esc) opens packs in any Blizz game, he gets grays and blues up the whazoo. When I open packs, I fucking LIVE DELICIOUSLY. Exhibit a: bought two packs with in-game gold after completing some quests. Here's what I got.
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See, I was not exaggerating the frequency of golden cards she gets.When my husband (Zero Esc) opens packs in any Blizz game, he gets grays and blues up the whazoo. When I open packs, I fucking LIVE DELICIOUSLY. Exhibit a: bought two packs with in-game gold after completing some quests. Here's what I got.
View attachment 23366 View attachment 23367
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(But now legendaries, WTF)
I caved and bought the rest of League of Explorers, largely to dust later but there a couple cards (Bran) I intend to keep for Brawls and such. And I figured I could have fun with some of them until Mammoth begins. Tunnel Trogg was the last card I needed to be a jackass Shaman.
Anyway, I noticed that one boss ran pre-nerfed Abusive Sergeant, which implies they have their own card versions of even normal cards and not just boss special cards, even though bosses can use the discover mechanic to get cards that didn't exist until after their expansion.
Also, supposedly there will be an announcement tomorrow. Fingers crossed for rotation date.
Anyway, I noticed that one boss ran pre-nerfed Abusive Sergeant, which implies they have their own card versions of even normal cards and not just boss special cards, even though bosses can use the discover mechanic to get cards that didn't exist until after their expansion.
Also, supposedly there will be an announcement tomorrow. Fingers crossed for rotation date.
I busted my way through a bunch more adventures yesterday, even opened up another wing of Karazan. I don't plan to dust any of the cards, but at least I'm working my way through acquiring the cards. I agree with @Zero Esc, the bosses are able to discover ANY current card, not just the ones that were around when the adventure came out, so sometimes you can get blindsided.
--Patrick
--Patrick
figmentPez
Staff member
Okay, so I went through the cards of Karazhan and Gadgetzan and, based on my limited knowedge of the meta, tried to figure out how many cards from each were actually being played in high tier decks during the time they were the most recent release. The numbers I came up with were:
26 of 45 cards for Karazhan
53 of 132 cards for Gadgetzan
Now, keep in mind that Karazhan was considered a low impact adventure, and Gadgetzan was considered to have more useful cards than most expansions. So that kind of skews things, but I didn't realize just how big a chunk of Gadgetzan was actually played. Especially the 11 of 20 legendary cards that saw serious play at some point, at least as far as I know. So it is fair to say that expansions have a bigger impact on the meta than adventures, in general, though I'm betting that BRM had a bigger impact than TGT, so it's not always true.
So, those 26 cards that I counted as highly playable, 14 common, 7 Rare, 1 Epic and 4 Legendary. That's 8,060 dust to craft, but let's assume you'll get all of the commons from packs, half the rares, ignore the epic, and get lucky and get one Legendary in 2800 gold worth of packs. That's still around 5,000 dust needed to craft what you'd get from the adventure. That's a huge amount of guaranteed value from an adventure.
And I stick by my earlier statement. Having a lot of people with limited card collections having to make difficult decisions about what cards to craft (and keep in mind that even people who aren't F2P and bought a $50 pre-order are still not going to have all of the cards in an expansion), only leads to a low-diversity and stale meta where players flock to the most popular and powerful decks because they don't want to waste resources on cards that might turn out to be worthless.
26 of 45 cards for Karazhan
53 of 132 cards for Gadgetzan
Now, keep in mind that Karazhan was considered a low impact adventure, and Gadgetzan was considered to have more useful cards than most expansions. So that kind of skews things, but I didn't realize just how big a chunk of Gadgetzan was actually played. Especially the 11 of 20 legendary cards that saw serious play at some point, at least as far as I know. So it is fair to say that expansions have a bigger impact on the meta than adventures, in general, though I'm betting that BRM had a bigger impact than TGT, so it's not always true.
So, those 26 cards that I counted as highly playable, 14 common, 7 Rare, 1 Epic and 4 Legendary. That's 8,060 dust to craft, but let's assume you'll get all of the commons from packs, half the rares, ignore the epic, and get lucky and get one Legendary in 2800 gold worth of packs. That's still around 5,000 dust needed to craft what you'd get from the adventure. That's a huge amount of guaranteed value from an adventure.
And I stick by my earlier statement. Having a lot of people with limited card collections having to make difficult decisions about what cards to craft (and keep in mind that even people who aren't F2P and bought a $50 pre-order are still not going to have all of the cards in an expansion), only leads to a low-diversity and stale meta where players flock to the most popular and powerful decks because they don't want to waste resources on cards that might turn out to be worthless.
Really, when it becomes widely known that gameplay is dominated by only a handful of decks, you will then see pretty much that handful of decks, because the people whose primary goal it is to win games will learn what decks are the winningest, and then will almost exclusively play those decks.
--Patrick
Which is why we may soon see more frequent nerfs or cards being thrown into Wild at odd times, solely to keep the meta from stagnifying. I'm not sure if that'll just make people more frustrated that they can't lock down a deck as easily or if people will welcome more shakeups.
Both, probably.
Both, probably.
The faster that cards are changed/nerfed, and the faster the meta is forced to change, the greater the pressure will be 0n players to own all the cards in order to remain competitive in spite of the changes.
What is needed (as always) is a sort of roshambo mechanic, where it is deck choice that matters. Not so much the choice of which deck to play, but more the attempt to predict what strategy the opposing player will be playing, and the inclusion of cards to counter it.
--Patrick
What is needed (as always) is a sort of roshambo mechanic, where it is deck choice that matters. Not so much the choice of which deck to play, but more the attempt to predict what strategy the opposing player will be playing, and the inclusion of cards to counter it.
--Patrick
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That happens once the period's meta stagnates. This can be seen now where streamers can predict which cards each opponent is about to play. I think having pre-set decks is going against how the game largely functions.
figmentPez
Staff member
I love the theme, but I am thoroughly underwhelmed by the cards revealed thus far.
"Here's another really powerful control card that's a drawn out mechanic." Uh-huh, and I'm sure I'm going to get to play it after you reveal another 1 mana 3/2...
"Here's another really powerful control card that's a drawn out mechanic." Uh-huh, and I'm sure I'm going to get to play it after you reveal another 1 mana 3/2...
Gonna try my best not to look at the cards in advance. The reverse-secret cards sound like the kind of thing you need to build a deck around.
Looking forward to tomorrow's patch and the daily bonuses.
Looking forward to tomorrow's patch and the daily bonuses.
It was about the same as a Kickstarter video, while much less awkward than the poor guy Nintendo dressed up as a squid researcher for the Splatoon 2 reveal during the Switch presentation. In fact, that squid researcher thing might've lowered my standards.
Saw a fake Shaman quest card: overload 10 mana crystals, reward: destroy 10 of your opponent's mana crystals .
I'm hoping the Shaman class will ease up once rotation happens. That said, that volcano card looks pretty crazy.
.I'm hoping the Shaman class will ease up once rotation happens. That said, that volcano card looks pretty crazy.
I know...especially if we get any more cards with anything similar to the Patron mechanic.
--Patrick
Oh right, he did specify it does the damage one at a time. I've seen C'thun backfire thanks to Patron in the same way.
Warlocks already have that combo with spreading madness. It doesn't work all that well.
Hearthstone updated. Patch notes copied from Reddit:
There is also a timer for matchmaking queue now that includes estimated wait and time spent in queue.
- Preps for Year of the Mommoth changes
- Pre-Purchase Journey to Un'Goro. 50 packs and "Fossil" card back for $49.99 USD
- Reaching level 20-15-10 and 5 in ranked will set a floor that you can no longer rank below.
Arena
- Standard only.
- Rare/Epic/Legends more common.
- Neutral / basics less common.
- If you own a golden card, it will show up golden in arena.
Ballance
- Small-Time Buccaneer's health lowered to 1.
- Spirit claws cost 2.
- Better matchmaking for new players.
- Testing new account creation process for mobile.
- Small time buck interacts with attack changes better now.
- Resolved an problem where Kazakus potions where blank.
- Knuckles still works when misdirected.
- Wrath's card draw timing fixed with Daring reporter.
- Djinni of Zephyres now also can copy cards that add spell damage
- Bouncing blade now notices divine shield.
- Fixed the looks of triclass cards in collection.
- Fixed stop payments and time outs in shop.
- Visual fixes.
There is also a timer for matchmaking queue now that includes estimated wait and time spent in queue.