This is exactly the reason I have a spare account. If ever I have a friend that wants to start playing, they'll at least have a good collection to start playing. I'd rather put the time and effort in just so that a friend of mine has a decent chance at finding and maintaining interest in the game instead of pretending my friends will be fine with building their own collection. That being said, when people who have been playing since BRM dropped want to do this because of how bad the experience is for new players is when it might be time to take a good hard look at your game and ask yourself just how much could be done.
I blame Blizzard's inability to do much about this on the fact that they've been successful for many years. If Blizzard were a smaller company and needed a way to break out onto the scene and actually get new players interested and stay interested, they'd be able to do so much easier because they'd have to work for their success more instead of letting their image do all the talking, an image that acts as a shield. "We're wildly successful, so whatever we're doing should be good enough."
I remember my first few months playing this game, getting slaughtered in Casual over and over again. Not to netdecks, though--I only toyed around with cards from the basic set and didn't craft anything, so the system just matched me with players of similar rank. I think I faced netdecks about once in every 10 games. I guess it's different now.
I do agree that being a new player is a demoralizing experience, which is why Blizzard is focusing on improving their experience as they detailed in their latest community update. It's really difficult to build your collection as F2P, and I quit for a while in the middle of KoFT because of the pointless grind the game had become. I started playing again at the tail end of the KnC expansion, with the realization that I had to buy the next expansion pre-order just to be competitive. Even now I still think I have a pitiful collection that only allows me to construct great decks with 3 classes (Warrior, Paladin and Hunter). While fun to play, this can be such a grind on your time and money.
Hopefully the new ranks from 50-26 will help the experience.
It should, considering you can earn stuff while playing through those ranks. It'd be nice for these players to have a somewhat competent collection to play with when they start playing Rank 25+.
Even though the game was much younger back before BRM was live, it was somewhat harsh to play against others. It always felt like a losing battle. I took my time to experiment with various builds to find what kind of stuff worked and what didn't. From decks that only had Taunt minions to decks that focused on summoning minions, I didn't let the harsh nature of the game deter me, and neither should any of the new players out there. We all started off with nothing. I don't think it should be much different for newer players. Just as REALonrok said, "It's a card game.. You need to toss money at it to have fun... Hs isn't noob friendly and it shouldn't be." I agree completely with this statement, though I don't use that line of reasoning to justify the atmosphere being as punishing as it is for newer players.
The only thing newer players need is knowledge of the game, how to play well and how best to manage Gold and Arcane Dust. That's it. When I started the spare account that I have, I was able to play with the few cards I had enough to the point that I have a decent collection with that account, with the only purchase I made with money being the Welcome Bundle. The account is mostly F2P, and I feel I can have a similar level of fun with the game regardless of which account I'm playing because I understand how to play already and have years of experience with the game.
Shout out to Puzzle Labs for being a good tool for learning how to play with advanced board states. Honestly, I would highly suggest Puzzle Labs to new players so they can learn how to play better.
Back in days when i have started i needed to play 10 games to win mybe 2-3....but also i didnt play ranked first few months and when i collected some cards i have started to play it...it took me almost 1 year to get rank 10... Now im always rank 5-1. It would be much worse for newbies if they didnt split the game on two (wild and standard).
Hearthstone needs an equivalent to the Pauper format in MTG, except like Casual but separate. They should have done this years ago though so I'm hopeless in assuming it'll improve. Pay up or enjoy playing a few decks forever as a new player.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If you thought you knew what you think I know, then you'd know I knew you knew I know.
I think when you are a bit dedicated to put some thinking into your gameplay, it is enjoyable af even for newbies. I got my brother to play this game and he started last month, the lemon card back is his first he ever got. That said, i bought him the welcome bundle and he got king crush out of it. Then i told him to open packs from every expansion until he gets a legendary. Lucky for him he also got kathrena from the KaC pack as the guaranteed legenderies, the rest was mediocre. I dusted his clutchmother and crafted him the spellstone and some traps.
He went to rank 17 or 16. Then after he gathered dust, he crafted rexar and went to rank 7. It is doable for newcomers. Just stay away from casual.
Hearthstone needs an equivalent to the Pauper format in MTG, except like Casual but separate. They should have done this years ago though so I'm hopeless in assuming it'll improve. Pay up or enjoy playing a few decks forever as a new player.
That is a great suggestion, make a Pauper Casual format, where you are limited to say 8 rares, 4 epics and a legendary. Would have been great as a new player.
I agree with this in general, you really need to play a lot and do dailies to stay in it. My brother will play occasionally, and he is no where near any state of where he can play a few meta decks. I crafted Whizbang the Wonderful for him, and that's actually working quite well for him. At least blizz gave new players that...
Hearthstone needs an equivalent to the Pauper format in MTG, except like Casual but separate. They should have done this years ago though so I'm hopeless in assuming it'll improve. Pay up or enjoy playing a few decks forever as a new player.
That is a great suggestion, make a Pauper Casual format, where you are limited to say 8 rares, 4 epics and a legendary. Would have been great as a new player.
Not just the new players - imagine the possibilities with meme decks! I used to play with friends rare cards only that was awesome, game is much slower, no great one turn swings.
What do you guys think of the new rank system (aka the one exclusively made for the new players), which will be implemented next month? I'm thinking about creating a Smurf account just to see how the new player's experience and the new ladder will be, but if you ask me, I expect to see A LOT of Whizbang decks up until rank 25.
This may sound like something innocent for us veterans, because we are fully aware that only a small part of the 18 deck recipes are actually viable, which balances the design of the legendary as a whole. But my issue is that those lists are still stronger than the basic ones we start the game with, they will overwhelm them and this will also cause a lot of confusion for the unexperienced players. They will wonder why their opponents from the same rank have (semi)optimally built decks, while they start off with a patchwork.
I suspect that people will argue how new players are not restricted from crafting this legendary for themselves and this is true (also OMG, Kovachut, don't you know that hs is p2w?). I'm definitely not denying that everyone can acquire Whizbang the Wonderful by investing 1600 dust and this being a sweet deal (way easier to do than in the past; we are guaranteed a legendary in the first 10 packs after all and new players will also receive more loot with the new ladder system), but the issue with the caused confusion/insecurity still remains. How will new players know, that Whizbang the Wonderful is responsible for the stronger decks of their opponents? There isn't an animation to indicate this. What if no one recommended them the game and there is no one to guide them? What if they have never heard of hs before and have absolutely no knowledge of the cards whatsoever? I remember it took me a couple of days until I memorized all of them and I was still unfamiliar with the different strategies they were used in. Imho new players will feel awkward, because they'll play with their basic decks insecurely against the more advanced ones, while their Whizbang opponents play faster and are fully aware of the strategies of their decks.
So to summarize my thoughts - I personally hope, that Blizzard realizes the need of a better tutorial and a better informing for the advanced strategies and prepares new players for them. The puzzle labs were a good start, now we have to continue further.
Just some random thoughts coming from a random person. What's your opinion on this. Am I over-thinking?
[edit] I forgot to explain why I started talking about Whizbang. Because I can hardly imagine how a new player is fully aware of the viable tier 1-3 decks and consciously buys packs to craft one, in order to progress through the ladder with ease. You have to spend a lot of money in buying packs from different sets, until you get the needed pieces. We veterans had plenty of time and dust to gather them so it's super unlikely that someone will enter the ranked mode with e.g. odd rogue; we will never fall to rank 50, so we will never bother new players with our shiny decks. But Whizbang is another topic. Since he is very cheap, since his deck lists are stronger than the basic ones, he will be the most prevalent encounter* in the new ladder.
Well their first mistake was playing casual mode. A new player should immediately just start with playing ranked, as it is more likely to match them up with new players. Casual is and always has been a gold grinder or a test area for meta decks.
Besides Hearthstone is not much of a grind. I am not going to say it is completely F2P friendly but people are getting spoiled by OCGs. It is often forgotten that to get a cheap TCG competitive deck you will be paying in the region of £20 to £70.
Yes the New Player experience is bad but if you are going to quit after a couple of days of playing nothing but casual then maybe the game just isn't for you. If you aren't going to put any effort at all into it then why should the game cater to such a player?
You're completely dismissing casual players as whole and are implying that this game is built specifically for people that are able to pump hour after hour of games into it. Sure, if you play more, you get more cards, you can make more decks but, why can't we have a restructure? Make cards more accessible, especially to new players. Rewards for people that play multiple hours per day without fail should come from climbing ranks which, to an extent, already exists. I think more of a reward structure in ranked + more accessible cards for new players would help make this game thrive even more. Similar to OP, I've had friends quit in under a week because they're not willing to throw cash at it to catch up with cards and honestly, at the rate in which cards are being released, it's damn hard to catch up and stay caught up. I personally throw $200 at each expansion/new card set release, I'm still missing a whole bunch, even after disenchanting golden duplicates and crafting the cards I'm missing.
hopefully this problem will be some what fixed with the 25 extra ranks for new players.
once you leave those ranks you can never go back to them, so once you are experienced enough to get past them then you are more on par with the rank 20 players.
but 3 other things that might help new players would be,
1: give new players 5-10 packs from each expansion to set off their collection. this may seem like a lot but it would almost guarantee a legendary and/or epic from each set and that would help set off their collection severely.
2: sell bundles with packs from different expansions, they have done this already with the mammoth bundle, but they should take into consideration when pricing it that each set has its own pity timer, and so the chances of getting good cards is less, so they should sell the mammoth bundle but cheaper, sell one for each year, and sell them round the clock.
3: do as some people have suggested and put only 1 class legendary each exp. this way there is less class specific stuff to craft. and there would be better neutral legendarys, and crafting neutral legendarys is better value, but not if they suck. although if they make to many powerful neutral cards then people get angry at that. so i don't know how good doing this would really be.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Rejoice, for even in death, you have become children of Thanos.
Why did they play Casual at all? They should have start with either Arena to get used to the cards and interactions or straight into Ranked. Casual does not mean it's for new players.
And I don't think you need so many Legendaries to build a competitive deck either.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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They should at least give Whizbang the wonderfull to every new player, at least they could start playing with something
This is exactly the reason I have a spare account. If ever I have a friend that wants to start playing, they'll at least have a good collection to start playing. I'd rather put the time and effort in just so that a friend of mine has a decent chance at finding and maintaining interest in the game instead of pretending my friends will be fine with building their own collection. That being said, when people who have been playing since BRM dropped want to do this because of how bad the experience is for new players is when it might be time to take a good hard look at your game and ask yourself just how much could be done.
I blame Blizzard's inability to do much about this on the fact that they've been successful for many years. If Blizzard were a smaller company and needed a way to break out onto the scene and actually get new players interested and stay interested, they'd be able to do so much easier because they'd have to work for their success more instead of letting their image do all the talking, an image that acts as a shield. "We're wildly successful, so whatever we're doing should be good enough."
Come visit my Card Emporium. Strange things, you will find inside...
Come take the test, if you're daring. Feel free to show me your results in a message.
Hopefully the new ranks from 50-26 will help the experience.
I remember my first few months playing this game, getting slaughtered in Casual over and over again. Not to netdecks, though--I only toyed around with cards from the basic set and didn't craft anything, so the system just matched me with players of similar rank. I think I faced netdecks about once in every 10 games. I guess it's different now.
I do agree that being a new player is a demoralizing experience, which is why Blizzard is focusing on improving their experience as they detailed in their latest community update. It's really difficult to build your collection as F2P, and I quit for a while in the middle of KoFT because of the pointless grind the game had become. I started playing again at the tail end of the KnC expansion, with the realization that I had to buy the next expansion pre-order just to be competitive. Even now I still think I have a pitiful collection that only allows me to construct great decks with 3 classes (Warrior, Paladin and Hunter). While fun to play, this can be such a grind on your time and money.
It should, considering you can earn stuff while playing through those ranks. It'd be nice for these players to have a somewhat competent collection to play with when they start playing Rank 25+.
Even though the game was much younger back before BRM was live, it was somewhat harsh to play against others. It always felt like a losing battle. I took my time to experiment with various builds to find what kind of stuff worked and what didn't. From decks that only had Taunt minions to decks that focused on summoning minions, I didn't let the harsh nature of the game deter me, and neither should any of the new players out there. We all started off with nothing. I don't think it should be much different for newer players. Just as REALonrok said, "It's a card game.. You need to toss money at it to have fun... Hs isn't noob friendly and it shouldn't be." I agree completely with this statement, though I don't use that line of reasoning to justify the atmosphere being as punishing as it is for newer players.
The only thing newer players need is knowledge of the game, how to play well and how best to manage Gold and Arcane Dust. That's it. When I started the spare account that I have, I was able to play with the few cards I had enough to the point that I have a decent collection with that account, with the only purchase I made with money being the Welcome Bundle. The account is mostly F2P, and I feel I can have a similar level of fun with the game regardless of which account I'm playing because I understand how to play already and have years of experience with the game.
Shout out to Puzzle Labs for being a good tool for learning how to play with advanced board states. Honestly, I would highly suggest Puzzle Labs to new players so they can learn how to play better.
Come visit my Card Emporium. Strange things, you will find inside...
Come take the test, if you're daring. Feel free to show me your results in a message.
me too and too expansive
Prophet Velen op Resurrect Prophet Velen
which patch is that?
Prophet Velen op Resurrect Prophet Velen
yes you are too straight
Prophet Velen op Resurrect Prophet Velen
Back in days when i have started i needed to play 10 games to win mybe 2-3....but also i didnt play ranked first few months and when i collected some cards i have started to play it...it took me almost 1 year to get rank 10... Now im always rank 5-1. It would be much worse for newbies if they didnt split the game on two (wild and standard).
Hearthstone needs an equivalent to the Pauper format in MTG, except like Casual but separate. They should have done this years ago though so I'm hopeless in assuming it'll improve. Pay up or enjoy playing a few decks forever as a new player.
If you thought you knew what you think I know, then you'd know I knew you knew I know.
yes that's what I think too
If I reply without quote, then how can people know who I am replying to?
Prophet Velen op Resurrect Prophet Velen
I think when you are a bit dedicated to put some thinking into your gameplay, it is enjoyable af even for newbies. I got my brother to play this game and he started last month, the lemon card back is his first he ever got. That said, i bought him the welcome bundle and he got king crush out of it. Then i told him to open packs from every expansion until he gets a legendary. Lucky for him he also got kathrena from the KaC pack as the guaranteed legenderies, the rest was mediocre. I dusted his clutchmother and crafted him the spellstone and some traps.
He went to rank 17 or 16. Then after he gathered dust, he crafted rexar and went to rank 7. It is doable for newcomers. Just stay away from casual.
Welcome to rank 50 now . Blizzard heard you lolz
That is a great suggestion, make a Pauper Casual format, where you are limited to say 8 rares, 4 epics and a legendary. Would have been great as a new player.
I agree with this in general, you really need to play a lot and do dailies to stay in it. My brother will play occasionally, and he is no where near any state of where he can play a few meta decks. I crafted Whizbang the Wonderful for him, and that's actually working quite well for him. At least blizz gave new players that...
Not just the new players - imagine the possibilities with meme decks! I used to play with friends rare cards only that was awesome, game is much slower, no great one turn swings.
The goal of all life is death.
Maybe a bit off topic:
What do you guys think of the new rank system (aka the one exclusively made for the new players), which will be implemented next month? I'm thinking about creating a Smurf account just to see how the new player's experience and the new ladder will be, but if you ask me, I expect to see A LOT of Whizbang decks up until rank 25.
This may sound like something innocent for us veterans, because we are fully aware that only a small part of the 18 deck recipes are actually viable, which balances the design of the legendary as a whole. But my issue is that those lists are still stronger than the basic ones we start the game with, they will overwhelm them and this will also cause a lot of confusion for the unexperienced players. They will wonder why their opponents from the same rank have (semi)optimally built decks, while they start off with a patchwork.
I suspect that people will argue how new players are not restricted from crafting this legendary for themselves and this is true (also OMG, Kovachut, don't you know that hs is p2w?). I'm definitely not denying that everyone can acquire Whizbang the Wonderful by investing 1600 dust and this being a sweet deal (way easier to do than in the past; we are guaranteed a legendary in the first 10 packs after all and new players will also receive more loot with the new ladder system), but the issue with the caused confusion/insecurity still remains. How will new players know, that Whizbang the Wonderful is responsible for the stronger decks of their opponents? There isn't an animation to indicate this. What if no one recommended them the game and there is no one to guide them? What if they have never heard of hs before and have absolutely no knowledge of the cards whatsoever? I remember it took me a couple of days until I memorized all of them and I was still unfamiliar with the different strategies they were used in. Imho new players will feel awkward, because they'll play with their basic decks insecurely against the more advanced ones, while their Whizbang opponents play faster and are fully aware of the strategies of their decks.
So to summarize my thoughts - I personally hope, that Blizzard realizes the need of a better tutorial and a better informing for the advanced strategies and prepares new players for them. The puzzle labs were a good start, now we have to continue further.
Just some random thoughts coming from a random person. What's your opinion on this. Am I over-thinking?
[edit] I forgot to explain why I started talking about Whizbang. Because I can hardly imagine how a new player is fully aware of the viable tier 1-3 decks and consciously buys packs to craft one, in order to progress through the ladder with ease. You have to spend a lot of money in buying packs from different sets, until you get the needed pieces. We veterans had plenty of time and dust to gather them so it's super unlikely that someone will enter the ranked mode with e.g. odd rogue; we will never fall to rank 50, so we will never bother new players with our shiny decks. But Whizbang is another topic. Since he is very cheap, since his deck lists are stronger than the basic ones, he will be the most prevalent encounter* in the new ladder.
You're completely dismissing casual players as whole and are implying that this game is built specifically for people that are able to pump hour after hour of games into it. Sure, if you play more, you get more cards, you can make more decks but, why can't we have a restructure? Make cards more accessible, especially to new players. Rewards for people that play multiple hours per day without fail should come from climbing ranks which, to an extent, already exists. I think more of a reward structure in ranked + more accessible cards for new players would help make this game thrive even more. Similar to OP, I've had friends quit in under a week because they're not willing to throw cash at it to catch up with cards and honestly, at the rate in which cards are being released, it's damn hard to catch up and stay caught up. I personally throw $200 at each expansion/new card set release, I'm still missing a whole bunch, even after disenchanting golden duplicates and crafting the cards I'm missing.
hopefully this problem will be some what fixed with the 25 extra ranks for new players.
once you leave those ranks you can never go back to them, so once you are experienced enough to get past them then you are more on par with the rank 20 players.
but 3 other things that might help new players would be,
1: give new players 5-10 packs from each expansion to set off their collection. this may seem like a lot but it would almost guarantee a legendary and/or epic from each set and that would help set off their collection severely.
2: sell bundles with packs from different expansions, they have done this already with the mammoth bundle, but they should take into consideration when pricing it that each set has its own pity timer, and so the chances of getting good cards is less, so they should sell the mammoth bundle but cheaper, sell one for each year, and sell them round the clock.
3: do as some people have suggested and put only 1 class legendary each exp. this way there is less class specific stuff to craft. and there would be better neutral legendarys, and crafting neutral legendarys is better value, but not if they suck. although if they make to many powerful neutral cards then people get angry at that. so i don't know how good doing this would really be.
Rejoice, for even in death, you have become children of Thanos.
Why did they play Casual at all? They should have start with either Arena to get used to the cards and interactions or straight into Ranked. Casual does not mean it's for new players.
And I don't think you need so many Legendaries to build a competitive deck either.