TL DR - There needs to be more of a "I don't have every single legendary" meta.
I don't think 3 expansions will be a problem for F2P players. I see all of the complaints about not being able to have all of the good cards, and having to spend so much money in order to be competitive. I disagree. For new players who don't want to spend any money, they will always have options to build decks and play in whatever format they want. Given that there will be more cards each season and less of a chance that everyone will have all of the new cards, it will be more common to face opponents that are not as we say, "dressed to the nines". Especially at the lower levels. And for existing F2P players who do not want to shell out $50 three times a year, you'll have to work a little bit harder to have 2-3 decks that are competitive. I don't see a problem with that. It only takes 1 good deck to climb the ladder. That's 1-3 legendaries per expansion needed to make the game interesting. How many legendaries do you expect to get for free? I think that was a problem with adventures, the game becomes flooded with legendary minions and they aren't that exciting to see anymore. So many class legendaries became useless. When if ever do you see Grommash Hellscream or Cenarius? Excellent cards, and I'm sure most F2P players probably have these and they never see any play. There will be more of a variety of decks, and you won't see as many decks with all 30 of the teir 1 cards needed.
This is a game smaller in size and scope than any MMO. The price of all the content in each full Standard rotation is already over 400$ -- 200$ per year.
Unlike actual collectible card games, you can't sell your collection, nor individual cards. And by the gods -- the small sum of 400$ is a bargain compared to the amount of life you waste by grinding the cards out from 30 daily wins.
There will only be more variety in decks if there is more of a variety of cards that are on the same level of viability. An expansion filled with Pompous Thespians will only have the Barnes and Maelstrom Portals see play. The reason we have metas and not everyone throws the best 30 cards into their decks is because of the variance in viability of those cards.
Instead of 3 expansions I think they should do 4 or 5 each year
have the first and last expansion be bigger and the middle ones smaller (less cards, like 60 new cards or something)
this way, there is a change in metas MORE OFTEN. we don't always need more cards to prevent a stale meta, just more frequent changes.
That's what Adventures are.
For what you're saying to work it would just have to be 4-5 smaller expansions a year, so like 100 cards each, assuming Blizzard cares about collectors trying to get all of the cards in each release.
Instead of 3 expansions I think they should do 4 or 5 each year
have the first and last expansion be bigger and the middle ones smaller (less cards, like 60 new cards or something)
this way, there is a change in metas MORE OFTEN. we don't always need more cards to prevent a stale meta, just more frequent changes.
That's what Adventures are.
For what you're saying to work it would just have to be 4-5 smaller expansions a year, so like 100 cards each, assuming Blizzard cares about collectors trying to get all of the cards in each release.
Adventure or expansion is not the point. The point is same amount of content but distributed in smaller chunks making changes more often in the meta.
3 expansions this year at 135 cards each = 405 cards in a year.......I think it would much better (for meta) if there were 5 different releases of 81 cards. 5x81=405 so same amount of cards.
Number of cards were never problem imo, but quality of cards... so that marketing BS "more cards bigger impact" has little to do with reality and to me it just looks like a better model to make more money - cos they can. Adventure costs 20$ to have it completed and expansion costs over 2 times more just for a pre-order to scratch the surface of the expansion. Simple as that...
They just sell story how more cards bla bla, - not true, if they made less worthless cards (~50-70% of every expansion from my experience is either bad or completely unplayable) and less broken cards that will define meta alone in very small numbers, we wouldn't have any problems at all even with 3 adventures and more frequent balance changes (well maybe not 3 adventures but 2-1 or 1-2 like last year).
I personally don't care about this that much cos I can keep up with gold only but people that miss cards won't be able to keep up anymore for sure, and F2P will not be possible for new players, only for those that already have decent collection and have played a lot in the past.
F2P will always be possible. You just won't have all of the cards. But if you're free to play, why should you have all of the cards?
Instead of 3 expansions I think they should do 4 or 5 each year
have the first and last expansion be bigger and the middle ones smaller (less cards, like 60 new cards or something)
this way, there is a change in metas MORE OFTEN. we don't always need more cards to prevent a stale meta, just more frequent changes.
That's what Adventures are.
For what you're saying to work it would just have to be 4-5 smaller expansions a year, so like 100 cards each, assuming Blizzard cares about collectors trying to get all of the cards in each release.
Adventure or expansion is not the point. The point is same amount of content but distributed in smaller chunks making changes more often in the meta.
3 expansions this year at 135 cards each = 405 cards in a year.......I think it would much better (for meta) if there were 5 different releases of 81 cards. 5x81=405 so same amount of cards.
That's almost 2 months per expansion. That doesn't make sense. Hey look the meta has changed, let's build a new deck. 2 weeks later, oh there getting ready for the next expansion, I just built this deck. Oh new mechanics? Great. I have 1/3 of the current expansion. Nobody would ever buy cards. This would probably kill Hearthstone for sure.
I hope they add a cancerous mechanic for Aggro like they did for control (jade) something like everyone time you opponent plays a minion heal your hero for 10 health
I hope they add a cancerous mechanic for Aggro like they did for control (jade) something like everyone time you opponent plays a minion heal your hero for 10 health
and it will be fun and balanced for all
It wouldn't even have to be 10, could be 4 and be good.
Adventure or expansion is not the point. The point is same amount of content but distributed in smaller chunks making changes more often in the meta.
3 expansions this year at 135 cards each = 405 cards in a year.......I think it would much better (for meta) if there were 5 different releases of 81 cards. 5x81=405 so same amount of cards.
That's almost 2 months per expansion. That doesn't make sense. Hey look the meta has changed, let's build a new deck. 2 weeks later, oh there getting ready for the next expansion, I just built this deck. Oh new mechanics? Great. I have 1/3 of the current expansion. Nobody would ever buy cards. This would probably kill Hearthstone for sure.
Well you typically only need 1/3 of the expansion anyways to make good decks lol. It would be a lot for players to keep up with, I agree but it would create more excitement and more "freshness" for players. They don't need to introduce a new mechanic each expansion, just new cards.
Also, your last sentence- "this would probably kill Hearthstone for sure." -had me laughing. It's probably for sure bad logic. :)
Adventure or expansion is not the point. The point is same amount of content but distributed in smaller chunks making changes more often in the meta.
3 expansions this year at 135 cards each = 405 cards in a year.......I think it would much better (for meta) if there were 5 different releases of 81 cards. 5x81=405 so same amount of cards.
That's almost 2 months per expansion. That doesn't make sense. Hey look the meta has changed, let's build a new deck. 2 weeks later, oh there getting ready for the next expansion, I just built this deck. Oh new mechanics? Great. I have 1/3 of the current expansion. Nobody would ever buy cards. This would probably kill Hearthstone for sure.
Well you typically only need 1/3 of the expansion anyways to make good decks lol. It would be a lot for players to keep up with, I agree but it would create more excitement and more "freshness" for players. They don't need to introduce a new mechanic each expansion, just new cards.
Also, your last sentence- "this would probably kill Hearthstone for sure." -had me laughing. It's probably for sure bad logic. :)
Yea you got me there. That's what I get for not proof reading. I do still stick by my point. You can't introduce new cards that quickly, people will quit.
Adventure or expansion is not the point. The point is same amount of content but distributed in smaller chunks making changes more often in the meta.
3 expansions this year at 135 cards each = 405 cards in a year.......I think it would much better (for meta) if there were 5 different releases of 81 cards. 5x81=405 so same amount of cards.
That's almost 2 months per expansion. That doesn't make sense. Hey look the meta has changed, let's build a new deck. 2 weeks later, oh there getting ready for the next expansion, I just built this deck. Oh new mechanics? Great. I have 1/3 of the current expansion. Nobody would ever buy cards. This would probably kill Hearthstone for sure.
Well you typically only need 1/3 of the expansion anyways to make good decks lol. It would be a lot for players to keep up with, I agree but it would create more excitement and more "freshness" for players. They don't need to introduce a new mechanic each expansion, just new cards.
Also, your last sentence- "this would probably kill Hearthstone for sure." -had me laughing. It's probably for sure bad logic. :)
Yea you got me there. That's what I get for not proof reading. I do still stick by my point. You can't introduce new cards that quickly, people will quit.
That'd be the players' problem though. All the players not having all cards would be an extremely healthy change.
Adventure or expansion is not the point. The point is same amount of content but distributed in smaller chunks making changes more often in the meta.
3 expansions this year at 135 cards each = 405 cards in a year.......I think it would much better (for meta) if there were 5 different releases of 81 cards. 5x81=405 so same amount of cards.
That's almost 2 months per expansion. That doesn't make sense. Hey look the meta has changed, let's build a new deck. 2 weeks later, oh there getting ready for the next expansion, I just built this deck. Oh new mechanics? Great. I have 1/3 of the current expansion. Nobody would ever buy cards. This would probably kill Hearthstone for sure.
Well you typically only need 1/3 of the expansion anyways to make good decks lol. It would be a lot for players to keep up with, I agree but it would create more excitement and more "freshness" for players. They don't need to introduce a new mechanic each expansion, just new cards.
Also, your last sentence- "this would probably kill Hearthstone for sure." -had me laughing. It's probably for sure bad logic. :)
Yea you got me there. That's what I get for not proof reading. I do still stick by my point. You can't introduce new cards that quickly, people will quit.
That'd be the players' problem though. All the players not having all cards would be an extremely healthy change.
Im with Toymachine here. More cards do not necesseraly mean its better. Also there is a difference in "how" you obtain more cards. They easily could have kept the adventures and raised the amount of cards you get, if "more" cards is their only goal. But it isnt. Expansions generate more money, due to the randomness of packs, simple as that.
Hearthstone wasnt in a bad spot when it initially launched and the time after that. The 2 adventures 1 expansion a year could easily work out if they print cards that fullfill these requirements:
a) give you the freedom of choice and by that i mean cards that do not restrict you to a certain type of deck. Best examples are C'Thun and Jade mechanics. Those mechanics force you to include a lot of specific cards. Thats bad. A huge part of each set is dedicated towards one specific tpe of playstyle and that in itself limits the hole set. The better way to go is to print intresting cards that stand for themself and can synergies with your deck if you come up with a good idea. That creates a more diverse meta, because its not straightforward.
b) They need to stop to print 60% filler cards. I mean its fine if they want include some not so good cards, but there are simply too many underpowered ones that have no real use. Sure, not everything needs to be for a competetive deck, but at least make them somewhat intresting and playable.
c) Create cards that have intresting effects. We look at Jade and C'Thun again. Those cards could have printed " boring" on them. Its just raw stats, with not much going on. That is intresting for 2 games, not for longer.
Anyway, i simply cannot see how 3 expansions a year is free to play friendly. Especially with so many cards that are way lower on powerlevel than others.
I disagree partly. Filler cards are fine, you need to have random effects when playing certain cards, and it adds to the flavor to see a meh card pop out of a spell cast, or a minion dies and summons a 3 drop say, and you get something terrible like Backstreet Leper.
The problem with adventures is that too many legendary cards for free. For 20 dollars you get a whole stack of legendary cards. And these cards were in all the tier 1 decks. Take LOE for example. Brann BronzebeardReno JacksonElise StarseekerTunnel TroggTotem Golem. All good cards, and see lots of play. And that's just some of them. And truthfully, nobody cared about the adventure, they just wanted the cards, played it once, got all of the cards, and never looked back.
The reason 3 expansions is friendly to free to play is that you can get a lot of free cards by just logging in during the launch. You may even just get 1 free legendary. And if you play your cards right, you can buy packs and have a good stack of playable cards, and not worry so much about everyone having that same stupid pirate warrior or jade deck that is insta lose.
Im with Toymachine here. More cards do not necesseraly mean its better. Also there is a difference in "how" you obtain more cards. They easily could have kept the adventures and raised the amount of cards you get, if "more" cards is their only goal. But it isnt. Expansions generate more money, due to the randomness of packs, simple as that.
They generate more money, because the cards are random, which also causes that players don't get all the cards, which is a big upside. More cards isn't the primary upside, the primary upside is what that causes which is that players can't collect all of them.
Hearthstone wasnt in a bad spot when it initially launched and the time after that. The 2 adventures 1 expansion a year could easily work out if they print cards that fullfill these requirements:
a) give you the freedom of choice and by that i mean cards that do not restrict you to a certain type of deck. Best examples are C'Thun and Jade mechanics. Those mechanics force you to include a lot of specific cards. Thats bad. A huge part of each set is dedicated towards one specific tpe of playstyle and that in itself limits the hole set. The better way to go is to print intresting cards that stand for themself and can synergies with your deck if you come up with a good idea. That creates a more diverse meta, because its not straightforward.
I agree with a) but it doesn't make the old card release model viable.
Anyway, i simply cannot see how 3 expansions a year is free to play friendly. Especially with so many cards that are way lower on powerlevel than others.
It isn't directly. F2P players have less cards, which by itself is bad, but so do their opponents so overall the situation is better. That is, unless P2P players spend huge amounts of money and get all the good cards anyways. The solution is to print even more cards, especially more legendaries while raising their drop rates and maybe also raising the crafting costs. I agree that the legendary power level relatively to the rest of the cards should be higher than it currently is.
Im with Toymachine here. More cards do not necesseraly mean its better. Also there is a difference in "how" you obtain more cards. They easily could have kept the adventures and raised the amount of cards you get, if "more" cards is their only goal. But it isnt. Expansions generate more money, due to the randomness of packs, simple as that.
They generate more money, because the cards are random, which also causes that players don't get all the cards, which is a big upside. More cards isn't the primary upside, the primary upside is what that causes which is that players can't collect all of them.
Hearthstone wasnt in a bad spot when it initially launched and the time after that. The 2 adventures 1 expansion a year could easily work out if they print cards that fullfill these requirements:
a) give you the freedom of choice and by that i mean cards that do not restrict you to a certain type of deck. Best examples are C'Thun and Jade mechanics. Those mechanics force you to include a lot of specific cards. Thats bad. A huge part of each set is dedicated towards one specific tpe of playstyle and that in itself limits the hole set. The better way to go is to print intresting cards that stand for themself and can synergies with your deck if you come up with a good idea. That creates a more diverse meta, because its not straightforward.
I agree with a) but it doesn't make the old card release model viable.
Anyway, i simply cannot see how 3 expansions a year is free to play friendly. Especially with so many cards that are way lower on powerlevel than others.
It isn't directly. F2P players have less cards, which by itself is bad, but so do their opponents so overall the situation is better. That is, unless P2P players spend huge amounts of money and get all the good cards anyways. The solution is to print even more cards, especially more legendaries while raising their drop rates and maybe also raising the crafting costs. I agree that the legendary power level relatively to the rest of the cards should be higher than it currently is.
I think Banana gets it. There needs to be good cards, that you don't have. That you want. And then there needs to be another set coming out soon. So you play what you have and get good at it. Try and do good until the next set pops up. There won't be this long stale meta.
They should spend less time pumping out garbage and actually try to balance their game. Rather than release 400 cards a year of which 15 will be used they should release 100 or so genuinely good/balanced/impactful cards. I don't want to get 18 Worgen Greasers just so I can play against a midrange shaman thats 90% the same as the midrange shaman from a year ago.
I haven't spent any money on the game since it came out of beta (bought around 200 packs in total with IRL money I think before that) and I can easily afford to make most of the tier 1 decks and I have a shit ton of golden legendaries from the classic set (and a couple more from the newer ones) which I crafted because I had so much dust lying around. So it is possible to be F2P. I can usually go infinite in arena though.
There will be cards that aren't superior. That's just something to get used to. It's part of the RNG. You can't get rid of RNG, without RNG it's just Rock Paper Scissors. It's a fun mechanic to the game. It makes arena work. It's part of Hearthstone. There are other games to play where you don't have as much RNG.
TL DR - There needs to be more of a "I don't have every single legendary" meta.
I don't think 3 expansions will be a problem for F2P players. I see all of the complaints about not being able to have all of the good cards, and having to spend so much money in order to be competitive. I disagree. For new players who don't want to spend any money, they will always have options to build decks and play in whatever format they want. Given that there will be more cards each season and less of a chance that everyone will have all of the new cards, it will be more common to face opponents that are not as we say, "dressed to the nines". Especially at the lower levels. And for existing F2P players who do not want to shell out $50 three times a year, you'll have to work a little bit harder to have 2-3 decks that are competitive. I don't see a problem with that. It only takes 1 good deck to climb the ladder. That's 1-3 legendaries per expansion needed to make the game interesting. How many legendaries do you expect to get for free? I think that was a problem with adventures, the game becomes flooded with legendary minions and they aren't that exciting to see anymore. So many class legendaries became useless. When if ever do you see Grommash Hellscream or Cenarius? Excellent cards, and I'm sure most F2P players probably have these and they never see any play. There will be more of a variety of decks, and you won't see as many decks with all 30 of the teir 1 cards needed.
This is a game smaller in size and scope than any MMO.
The price of all the content in each full Standard rotation is already over 400$ -- 200$ per year.
Unlike actual collectible card games, you can't sell your collection, nor individual cards.
And by the gods -- the small sum of 400$ is a bargain compared to the amount of life you waste by grinding the cards out from 30 daily wins.
There will only be more variety in decks if there is more of a variety of cards that are on the same level of viability. An expansion filled with Pompous Thespians will only have the Barnes and Maelstrom Portals see play. The reason we have metas and not everyone throws the best 30 cards into their decks is because of the variance in viability of those cards.
Instead of 3 expansions I think they should do 4 or 5 each year
have the first and last expansion be bigger and the middle ones smaller (less cards, like 60 new cards or something)
this way, there is a change in metas MORE OFTEN. we don't always need more cards to prevent a stale meta, just more frequent changes.
I hope they add a cancerous mechanic for Aggro like they did for control (jade) something like everyone time you opponent plays a minion heal your hero for 10 health
and it will be fun and balanced for all
They should spend less time pumping out garbage and actually try to balance their game. Rather than release 400 cards a year of which 15 will be used they should release 100 or so genuinely good/balanced/impactful cards. I don't want to get 18 Worgen Greasers just so I can play against a midrange shaman thats 90% the same as the midrange shaman from a year ago.
I haven't spent any money on the game since it came out of beta (bought around 200 packs in total with IRL money I think before that) and I can easily afford to make most of the tier 1 decks and I have a shit ton of golden legendaries from the classic set (and a couple more from the newer ones) which I crafted because I had so much dust lying around.
So it is possible to be F2P. I can usually go infinite in arena though.
There will be cards that aren't superior. That's just something to get used to. It's part of the RNG. You can't get rid of RNG, without RNG it's just Rock Paper Scissors. It's a fun mechanic to the game. It makes arena work. It's part of Hearthstone. There are other games to play where you don't have as much RNG.