I’m gonna try to summarize my disappointment in yesterday’s blue post and I’m really curious about what the hearthpwn community thinks. I know this rather belongs to the salt thread, I just didn’t want to make a wall of text there.
So to go in order:
Hall of Faming Genn and Baku. I know, no more “reporting for duty” and I’m not one of those players who will lose sleep about this, but I believe this is the sweep under the rug solution to the Genn and Baku problem and not an actual solution. I consider myself mainly a wild player, I usually reach rank 5 there with occasional standard play and it’s not that it will ruin wild or anything, but they could have changed these cards to keep an interesting deck building aspect in standard play. I mean for god’s sake, I read like a thousand nerf suggestions here and reddit, so in my opinion this is really just a do something as fast as we can, no thinking, just dump these two cards in the dumpster solution instead of working towards something that requires brain power and thinking and a lot of testing. Also, what’s about all those cards that just got nerfed because of all the even/odd shenanigans. Best example might be Level Up! as in wild, it stayed ok to buff them turn 5 that comes with a 2/5 body, so obviously it is not that much problematic at turn 5.
The single player experience. Two years ago, Blizzard said no more adventures because whatever bullshit, when in reality they meant we’d like to sell you one more expansion per year because it means more money to us. All right, I think people got over it and Blizzard implemented “adventure like” single player content with each expansion for FREE. Now, my favourite was Icecrown Citadel by far but I accept that dungeon run is the most popular. Now they implement it like some kind of “new feature” and saying that from this year forward we’d like you to not only pay for 3 expansions but previously free single player content as well. I know that you can get it for gold and I know they throw some packs to it, but I believe that this move has greed written all over it.
Random card back and rerolling legendary quest. Oh my god man. I mean these are quality of life changes, not even worth mentioning in a blue post that is supposed to herald the new hearthstone year. These are like changing the deck slots from 9 to 18. Community asked for these kind of things for years, it took some developer like a day of work and they try to sell it like “changes” they hope we will enjoy. I put the smart deck builder thing under this category as well. I mean, anybody ever used that in the age of netdecking and copying decks from the internet? Anyway…
Now I didn’t really care about the diablo immortal fiasco, or the laying off 800 people and that terrible statement with it. I mean I was hopeful toward Blizzard that they still love making games for us and Activison’s financial decisions will not overshadow the familiar blizzard game quality, but yesterday’s blue post really had me worried. I think the aforementioned “changes” and solutions one and only purpose is to get more money from customers with putting the least amount of work into games.
What I really expected from them and I would happily thrown them more money for it is like achievement system, new game modes (like what they doing to arena but constructed) and quality of life features like in-game statistics and deck tracker just to name a few. Instead we got sweep every problem under the rug, pay for what was free for the last two years and quality of life changes wrapped like actual game breaking modifications. Now I really hope they come up with some actual game-breaking mechanics in the first expansion because a better year of the raven summary would be odd/even decks which they just recognized as a fail, magnetic, shrines and loas which did not really got off so kinda like a year without any actual content besides the new cards. I’m starting to lose faith so I’m really looking forward to see what other people think as I could totally just overreact the whole thing.
TLDR: I think Blizzard with yesterday’s blue post admitting that they want the most money with the least amount of work instead of a put the hard work in, turn the game over, implement new, significant features and just then hold out their hands for my money. What do you think?
Edit: Most people think I'm a whining F2P, but I'm really far from F2P, actually I preordered every expansion since WoToG. Also what I meant by greedy is that they focus their development hours on things that can milk people's cash and not on what would actually make the game better. Last but not least, I didn't say these changes (mainly the HOF Baku/Genn) are bad, I'm just saying as a long time Blizz game fan that I expected so much more from the HS team. But I got the message: it is more than nothing, be patient, hopeful...
What exactly are people moaning about Genn and Baku going to Wild for? Newsflash peeps, they were playable in Wild for as long as they were in Standard and guess what? With the exception of Even Shaman tearing up the Ranked Ladder, not a problem. Ever. So what's changed?
Nothing. That's what. Blizzard have paved the way to be able to release new cards without the Genn/Baku thing being a problem in Standard. In Wild there are soooo many ways of dealing with big boards/big minions and loads of armour, so it's just as imposing a thing as it is in Standard.
Things are changing, hopefully for the better. So stop fucking moaning about it. .
I am a Wild player, and I am absolutely happy that they chose HoF as a solution to the Genn and Baku "problem": because indeed it was no problem at all (given smart game design in the future, with only minor synergies for Hero Powers). Just a crybaby issue of people getting bored too easily of stuff they don't even need to play.
Yes, Even Shaman has been an issue in Wild, but with the nerf to Flametongue Totem, it's now just a top tier deck, not a meta tyrant.
I am also baffled by the new Adventure thing, but i do not see it as greedy at all: if the golden legendary reward is disenchantable, the adventure becomes a good purchase, gold-wise. Otherwise, it is not. Either way you can CHOOSE what to do. The essence of F2P is farming in order to get new content. 3500g for an adventure is far from expensive (about 2 months with dailies, probably less). If you like it, you farm for it, otherwise you don't. Easy.
TL;DR: i see no easy and greedy ways, just changes, possibly good ones for the vast majority of players.
A wall of text from a crybaby ungrateful HS player. LOL.
What to comment exactly? Genn and Baku? AMAZING decision and of course it changes the meta for Standard(HSReplay was mentioning like 80 games per minute being played in Wild and x50 in Standard at some point, so bad or not, Standard is far more popular now). By rotating also 2 legendaries cards one year before their time. They are giving away 4000 dust to Standard players(or even to wild who want to disenchant them). 4000 dust, do you know how much is this? it's like giving about 38 packs away (1 pack about 104 dust I think)
Adventures free? I can't remember that being the case. Also for 2800 gold you gain 15 packs, 1 golden classic pack(at least 275 dust) and 1 golden legendary. if you sum this up, in gold, that's about paying 1000 gold to play the whole adventure. (and if you can disenchant the golden legendary for 3200 dust, then do the math, it's more than free-but if it's fun and not free, it's the same to me-personal opinion. You have the option to play with it 5 different decks, full golden. That is some value for some people out there.
You also comment on new modes, and you judge them for not introducing new ones, while not giving any credit for the Arena, which I think will be great this year, even better than the previous.
Better deck building system, random card pack and so on, yes sir, they are not life changing, but are nice small additions, why are you crying for some stuff that developers spent some hours on?
Yes, more changes are needed, I would like to have achievements and Tournament mode, but for once, stop being a crybaby.
to follow your order, i try to give you my perspective on the canges:
1. Hall of Fame - Genn and Baku are strong in wild, but they are not the main problem of the mode. And they are not greedy, because they give us the dust not only for them, but also for some useless support cards. For any f2p this is an awsome amount of dust, you can spend after rotation on cool new stuff. AND you can use the odd / even-mechanic still in wild if you liked the playstyle. I also read many of the nerf suggestions all over the internet and they were mainly dump crap. The only valid solution were hate cards, which do exist in wild. Any proposed nerf would be deleting the cards in both standard and wild - and I'm very glad they left the option for everyone to use them in wild
2. single player experience - they didn't say that it is a new feature, but they offer a combination of different wishes from the community. At first there will be the free wing giving you everything you had previously with dungeon run. Then you get the possibility of buying you more content (for gold!) and getting some packs in return. And i love that point. There is so much more fun in playing in a mode, when you have the feeling of an achievment. I know, free dungeon run and no reward is the same as paying for the reward with gold, but it feels different and it gives me a reason to play the mode. If I don't like it like the puzzles, than i don't have to play it and I'm not missing anything important to play the game. All in all, you get the free mode AND a pay mode with rewards!
3. Quality of life changes - all of these changes are great and there may come more in the future. There is nothing wrong about it. I really like all of them and you don't have to be salty that your quality of life wishes weren't included. That can change in the future. You see they are listening and I think an ingame deck tracker is more work that has to be done. By the way, I have no problem using a normal deck tracker. So i can wait for them to release one. But there is no way, i can change my card back every game with a tool outside the game. I only wish for some updates on the spectate feature for arena runs (drafting with friends would be so much easier, when they could see the cards I got offered)
4. achievment system - they are listening to us and I think that they will work on an achievment system, but that needs some time and we want a good solution on this. I think our longterm wishes are all considered by them. They give us first the things, they can programm in one month and the rest will follow!
5. new constructed game mode - I think they will test the system with arena and when it works really good, they will consider it for constructed as well. My hopes are high that they will implement something like this in late 2019 - first they have to test interactions between expansions like in the one tavern brawl where the meta got stale after a few days - they have to balance a new constructed mode where you get to play old and new expansions and so you have to wait
TLDR: they gave us very good short term solutions and are showing that they are listening to our wishes - that's the reason I think they are working on the other changes longterm (late 2019)
1. Genn and Baku rotation I applaud this excellent decision. They had to deal with an unexpected situation that was hurting the Standard gaming experience making it stale and limiting by card design. Look into the nerfs that have been done and how they had to consider how impactful and annoying the odd/even mechanic aspect had to with it. F2p players can rejoice as they are getting 3200 free dust out of it + the epics that rotate that they might have had in the collection and that they were not using. Let's say you had 2 of them. You get 1000 extra free dust as you will disenchant them safely. (I doubt cards like Glitter Moth will work in Wild). Design space gets to breathe again in the Standard format, and we will get an even more diverse experience because of it along with the rotation of the power-creep expansions. I expect the new Standard format to be a very refreshing experience for a while, we will see.
2. Single player experience. "Greed". It is a company with people on a pay-roll, the content they create and the people that work on it represent a cost. IT HAS TO BE WORTH. People were buying the old adventures mostly because the content for PvP was worth the cost and was needed to have a fulfilling PvP experience. They were a more P2W oriented model than this. As long as it was entertaining, the replayability factor was really low on those. Dungeon runs are an insane improvement on that obsolete model. Dungeon runs DO NOT REQUIRE YOU TO HAVE CARDS SPECIFICALLY TO PROGRESS IN THE ADVENTURE, like old adventures. Old adventures were "netdeck the winning strategy to win" for most people probably. They are their own game and it is not taking toll on your personal collection, it actually gives you the chance to enjoy playing cards that you do not own in your collection in the first place, which is amazing. Old adventures PvE content was not worth the money, that is why they cut them to get new expansions. People wanted to pay for cards. They want to get money out of people that might be interested in buying PvE content as well, it is perfectly legit. You want them? You buy them. You don't want to pay for them? You are free to get them f2p with gold for a reasonable trade-off. You do not give a fuck about PvE content? Enjoy free stuff anyways that you would not receive if the PvE content was not created. You want everything for free because of unmotivated sense of entitlement? Get lost, if a company would listen and adapt to requests like yours it would fail within a week. 3. Quality of life changes. They are welcome. Should they have been implemented before? Probably. They put them now? Good. Also, for how hypocritical it may sound it is actually scientifically convenient for them to mention them as improvements rather than small things. Marketing wise unluckily it is better to not release everything you can at your best, but to always have room for improvements. It is significantly harder to improve Perfect quality content and this creates all the time higher expectations and harder work. Not making everything perfect makes it easier to work. Can this be considered lazy? Yes. Did they have to fix these things because it was what it was chasing people away from the game? No. Better to invest time on other things first, meanwhile you can pop up effortless improvements here and there. A company has to maximise income and good feedback from their playerbase as much as possible in order to be successful. This does not mean to make them happy.
Look at Heroes of the Storm. It was basically the MOBA based on the complaints on League of Legends. They put in the game everything was "wrong" with LoL. Different maps,took away item building, different playstyles within the same hero, they made it much more team oriented, they made it much more easy to access cosmetic content for free, possibility to have an AFK player be commanded as a bot, always adding new things... did it work? Nope.
Free to play games are not deisgned to be perfect if they want to generate income. Deal with the facts. People always want more. To earn more you have to give less. It's the same in lots of human social aspects, even fuckin relationships. You don't have to the best, you have to be good enough with room to get better and close to the best. But if you get to be the best too soon, then you become boring as any further change if you are the best will make you worse. Boredom's a pain in the ass and one of the most detestable human aspects. Yet it exists and has to be dealt with accordingly.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Remember playing Control Shaman with Reincarnate shenanigans? No? It was fun, here's a refresher!
I'd like to point out one fact that people are, maybe, intentionally omitting. They are a company and they want to make as much money as possible with as little effort as possible. This is the way it is. People were expecting zero effort from them because people are used to getting fucked by blizzard. They announced this and people are fapping to it JUST because they never do ANYTHING special. THUS, blizzard is fucking awesome now for those people and the fact that the game is SHIT right now is not talked about anymore. And the way they iced the tournament mode is forgotten. Blizzard won.
These are excellent changes. Combined with the arrest of powercreep we saw in RR, they are finally starting to undo some of the damage that is now clearly attributable to Ben Brode's organizational policies.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Free to try and find a game, dealing cards for sorrow, cards for pain.
People who never change their mind, for good or for worse, are idiots. (not calling anyone out here)
I'm looking forward to these changes and I like that the devs are actually listening to the more experienced hearthstone players instead of what they did with wow.
A wall of text from a crybaby ungrateful HS player. LOL.
Why should I be grateful? I pay for a service. I'm considering not paying anymore as I'm not really satisfied with the service. Where is gratefulness coming into the picture?
to follow your order, i try to give you my perspective on the canges:
1. Hall of Fame - Genn and Baku are strong in wild, but they are not the main problem of the mode. And they are not greedy, because they give us the dust not only for them, but also for some useless support cards. For any f2p this is an awsome amount of dust, you can spend after rotation on cool new stuff. AND you can use the odd / even-mechanic still in wild if you liked the playstyle. I also read many of the nerf suggestions all over the internet and they were mainly dump crap. The only valid solution were hate cards, which do exist in wild. Any proposed nerf would be deleting the cards in both standard and wild - and I'm very glad they left the option for everyone to use them in wild
2. single player experience - they didn't say that it is a new feature, but they offer a combination of different wishes from the community. At first there will be the free wing giving you everything you had previously with dungeon run. Then you get the possibility of buying you more content (for gold!) and getting some packs in return. And i love that point. There is so much more fun in playing in a mode, when you have the feeling of an achievment. I know, free dungeon run and no reward is the same as paying for the reward with gold, but it feels different and it gives me a reason to play the mode. If I don't like it like the puzzles, than i don't have to play it and I'm not missing anything important to play the game. All in all, you get the free mode AND a pay mode with rewards!
3. Quality of life changes - all of these changes are great and there may come more in the future. There is nothing wrong about it. I really like all of them and you don't have to be salty that your quality of life wishes weren't included. That can change in the future. You see they are listening and I think an ingame deck tracker is more work that has to be done. By the way, I have no problem using a normal deck tracker. So i can wait for them to release one. But there is no way, i can change my card back every game with a tool outside the game. I only wish for some updates on the spectate feature for arena runs (drafting with friends would be so much easier, when they could see the cards I got offered)
4. achievment system - they are listening to us and I think that they will work on an achievment system, but that needs some time and we want a good solution on this. I think our longterm wishes are all considered by them. They give us first the things, they can programm in one month and the rest will follow!
5. new constructed game mode - I think they will test the system with arena and when it works really good, they will consider it for constructed as well. My hopes are high that they will implement something like this in late 2019 - first they have to test interactions between expansions like in the one tavern brawl where the meta got stale after a few days - they have to balance a new constructed mode where you get to play old and new expansions and so you have to wait
TLDR: they gave us very good short term solutions and are showing that they are listening to our wishes - that's the reason I think they are working on the other changes longterm (late 2019)
This is the kind of discussion I was trying to start and this is what I was looking forward to read. Thank you for sharing. To clarify, I didn't mean the greediness in the case of Genn and Baku, and I'm not sad they are going away to wild (in fact I don't have a problem with that at all) I just feel like they were lazy fixing it, so they chose the most simple solution.
Anyway, I'm more hopeful after reading this, thank you.
1. Genn and Baku rotation I applaud this excellent decision. They had to deal with an unexpected situation that was hurting the Standard gaming experience making it stale and limiting by card design. Look into the nerfs that have been done and how they had to consider how impactful and annoying the odd/even mechanic aspect had to with it. F2p players can rejoice as they are getting 3200 free dust out of it + the epics that rotate that they might have had in the collection and that they were not using. Let's say you had 2 of them. You get 1000 extra free dust as you will disenchant them safely. (I doubt cards like Glitter Moth will work in Wild). Design space gets to breathe again in the Standard format, and we will get an even more diverse experience because of it along with the rotation of the power-creep expansions. I expect the new Standard format to be a very refreshing experience for a while, we will see.
2. Single player experience. "Greed". It is a company with people on a pay-roll, the content they create and the people that work on it represent a cost. IT HAS TO BE WORTH. People were buying the old adventures mostly because the content for PvP was worth the cost and was needed to have a fulfilling PvP experience. They were a more P2W oriented model than this. As long as it was entertaining, the replayability factor was really low on those. Dungeon runs are an insane improvement on that obsolete model. Dungeon runs DO NOT REQUIRE YOU TO HAVE CARDS SPECIFICALLY TO PROGRESS IN THE ADVENTURE, like old adventures. Old adventures were "netdeck the winning strategy to win" for most people probably. They are their own game and it is not taking toll on your personal collection, it actually gives you the chance to enjoy playing cards that you do not own in your collection in the first place, which is amazing. Old adventures PvE content was not worth the money, that is why they cut them to get new expansions. People wanted to pay for cards. They want to get money out of people that might be interested in buying PvE content as well, it is perfectly legit. You want them? You buy them. You don't want to pay for them? You are free to get them f2p with gold for a reasonable trade-off. You do not give a fuck about PvE content? Enjoy free stuff anyways that you would not receive if the PvE content was not created. You want everything for free because of unmotivated sense of entitlement? Get lost, if a company would listen and adapt to requests like yours it would fail within a week. 3. Quality of life changes. They are welcome. Should they have been implemented before? Probably. They put them now? Good. Also, for how hypocritical it may sound it is actually scientifically convenient for them to mention them as improvements rather than small things. Marketing wise unluckily it is better to not release everything you can at your best, but to always have room for improvements. It is significantly harder to improve Perfect quality content and this creates all the time higher expectations and harder work. Not making everything perfect makes it easier to work. Can this be considered lazy? Yes. Did they have to fix these things because it was what it was chasing people away from the game? No. Better to invest time on other things first, meanwhile you can pop up effortless improvements here and there. A company has to maximise income and good feedback from their playerbase as much as possible in order to be successful. This does not mean to make them happy.
Look at Heroes of the Storm. It was basically the MOBA based on the complaints on League of Legends. They put in the game everything was "wrong" with LoL. Different maps,took away item building, different playstyles within the same hero, they made it much more team oriented, they made it much more easy to access cosmetic content for free, possibility to have an AFK player be commanded as a bot, always adding new things... did it work? Nope.
Free to play games are not deisgned to be perfect if they want to generate income. Deal with the facts. People always want more. To earn more you have to give less. It's the same in lots of human social aspects, even fuckin relationships. You don't have to the best, you have to be good enough with room to get better and close to the best. But if you get to be the best too soon, then you become boring as any further change if you are the best will make you worse. Boredom's a pain in the ass and one of the most detestable human aspects. Yet it exists and has to be dealt with accordingly.
Very interesting read, thank you for sharing. I guess you are kinda right.
I'm realy relieved to read all those positive comments here. In the past i got the feeling that people complain way to often. Maybe the tides are turning for HS again! They put great effort into the new content and the recent powerdrop will most probably be greatly rewarded soon. Rotating Genn and Baku is only the cherry on the cream.
Ps: Arena will be a blast! It'll be a new gamemode every two months!
A wall of text from a crybaby ungrateful HS player. LOL.
Why should I be grateful? I pay for a service. I'm considering not paying anymore as I'm not really satisfied with the service. Where is gratefulness coming into the picture?
The service was worse before, now these were positive changes and you still deny that. Good luck
About Odd|Even - i am more hater them than even Blizz, i want not just nerf those kind of decks, but delete them, i know, it's so radically, but it s really limiting Blizz for future, yes, Wild is for wild, but it's possible Genn and Baku with some very strong Addon wil destroy wild at all.
About Single - i m so tired about ladder and no changes for standart constracted play, so i switched HS into singleplayer game. Last year was not bad, for me, it's great place for spending some 2800 gold for deversity and hard mode and "mutations". Yes, you re right about price increase for people who wants all content, but for me, f*ck new packs, i will buy full single player content.
Like said above, you will got full old content for free too, 1st wing it's 9 classic classes with their typical hero powers and all bosses are avaible and 1 special hero. I don't know 100% sure how they will unlock content, but 1 "wing" will unlock you 2 special heroes with 3 special hero powers for each and 3 decks. About Mutation and hard mode, idk how it will be. But i m excited about it. I think that's enough content for 3-4 months of playing and then new singleplayer adventure.
About last - 100% right, but you re overreacting it, it's pretty whatever. And i m 100% agree, new modes and achievments would be so much better than just improving useless deck builder.
why on earth do you think its greedy to announce the changes to legendary quests and the random cardback option? they were just telling us everything that was changing, thats not greedy, thats just common sense.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Rejoice, for even in death, you have become children of Thanos.
If a man stands on the corner of a street and hands out £20 notes to people passing by, you can guarantee there will still be at least one person like the OP who complains about why man doesn't hand out £50's instead and how dare he expect people to be "grateful" for the free money (Gasp!)
Random card backs and rerolling legendary quests might be harder than it looks. Yes to you people who don't know how to do programming it all seems so easy. But under the hood it is actually often very hard to do. Also totally should be part of blue post. The more things that are mentioned there the better.
Also the way the phrased problem with Baku and Genn it seemed like they are worried about them only in standard, and are fine with them in wild. Not to mention that there is no good way to fix them. Also there were hundreds of people who suggested to hall of fame them instead of nerfing, so Blizzard did that.
Single player experience. Well a lot of people were not satisfied that there are no incentive. Now there are incentives but you have to pay for it... Well blizzard is still a business, what can you do... 2800 gold isn't that much to pay for 15 packs, 1 golden pack and 1 unique legendary minion.
I’m gonna try to summarize my disappointment in yesterday’s blue post and I’m really curious about what the hearthpwn community thinks. I know this rather belongs to the salt thread, I just didn’t want to make a wall of text there.
So to go in order:
Now I didn’t really care about the diablo immortal fiasco, or the laying off 800 people and that terrible statement with it. I mean I was hopeful toward Blizzard that they still love making games for us and Activison’s financial decisions will not overshadow the familiar blizzard game quality, but yesterday’s blue post really had me worried. I think the aforementioned “changes” and solutions one and only purpose is to get more money from customers with putting the least amount of work into games.
What I really expected from them and I would happily thrown them more money for it is like achievement system, new game modes (like what they doing to arena but constructed) and quality of life features like in-game statistics and deck tracker just to name a few. Instead we got sweep every problem under the rug, pay for what was free for the last two years and quality of life changes wrapped like actual game breaking modifications. Now I really hope they come up with some actual game-breaking mechanics in the first expansion because a better year of the raven summary would be odd/even decks which they just recognized as a fail, magnetic, shrines and loas which did not really got off so kinda like a year without any actual content besides the new cards. I’m starting to lose faith so I’m really looking forward to see what other people think as I could totally just overreact the whole thing.
TLDR: I think Blizzard with yesterday’s blue post admitting that they want the most money with the least amount of work instead of a put the hard work in, turn the game over, implement new, significant features and just then hold out their hands for my money. What do you think?
Edit: Most people think I'm a whining F2P, but I'm really far from F2P, actually I preordered every expansion since WoToG. Also what I meant by greedy is that they focus their development hours on things that can milk people's cash and not on what would actually make the game better. Last but not least, I didn't say these changes (mainly the HOF Baku/Genn) are bad, I'm just saying as a long time Blizz game fan that I expected so much more from the HS team. But I got the message: it is more than nothing, be patient, hopeful...
What exactly are people moaning about Genn and Baku going to Wild for? Newsflash peeps, they were playable in Wild for as long as they were in Standard and guess what? With the exception of Even Shaman tearing up the Ranked Ladder, not a problem. Ever. So what's changed?
Nothing. That's what. Blizzard have paved the way to be able to release new cards without the Genn/Baku thing being a problem in Standard. In Wild there are soooo many ways of dealing with big boards/big minions and loads of armour, so it's just as imposing a thing as it is in Standard.
Things are changing, hopefully for the better. So stop fucking moaning about it. .
4/3/19 RIP Keith Flint. 😔
I am a Wild player, and I am absolutely happy that they chose HoF as a solution to the Genn and Baku "problem": because indeed it was no problem at all (given smart game design in the future, with only minor synergies for Hero Powers). Just a crybaby issue of people getting bored too easily of stuff they don't even need to play.
Yes, Even Shaman has been an issue in Wild, but with the nerf to Flametongue Totem, it's now just a top tier deck, not a meta tyrant.
I am also baffled by the new Adventure thing, but i do not see it as greedy at all: if the golden legendary reward is disenchantable, the adventure becomes a good purchase, gold-wise. Otherwise, it is not. Either way you can CHOOSE what to do. The essence of F2P is farming in order to get new content. 3500g for an adventure is far from expensive (about 2 months with dailies, probably less). If you like it, you farm for it, otherwise you don't. Easy.
TL;DR: i see no easy and greedy ways, just changes, possibly good ones for the vast majority of players.
A wall of text from a crybaby ungrateful HS player. LOL.
What to comment exactly? Genn and Baku? AMAZING decision and of course it changes the meta for Standard(HSReplay was mentioning like 80 games per minute being played in Wild and x50 in Standard at some point, so bad or not, Standard is far more popular now). By rotating also 2 legendaries cards one year before their time. They are giving away 4000 dust to Standard players(or even to wild who want to disenchant them). 4000 dust, do you know how much is this? it's like giving about 38 packs away (1 pack about 104 dust I think)
Adventures free? I can't remember that being the case. Also for 2800 gold you gain 15 packs, 1 golden classic pack(at least 275 dust) and 1 golden legendary. if you sum this up, in gold, that's about paying 1000 gold to play the whole adventure. (and if you can disenchant the golden legendary for 3200 dust, then do the math, it's more than free-but if it's fun and not free, it's the same to me-personal opinion. You have the option to play with it 5 different decks, full golden. That is some value for some people out there.
You also comment on new modes, and you judge them for not introducing new ones, while not giving any credit for the Arena, which I think will be great this year, even better than the previous.
Better deck building system, random card pack and so on, yes sir, they are not life changing, but are nice small additions, why are you crying for some stuff that developers spent some hours on?
Yes, more changes are needed, I would like to have achievements and Tournament mode, but for once, stop being a crybaby.
to follow your order, i try to give you my perspective on the canges:
1. Hall of Fame - Genn and Baku are strong in wild, but they are not the main problem of the mode. And they are not greedy, because they give us the dust not only for them, but also for some useless support cards. For any f2p this is an awsome amount of dust, you can spend after rotation on cool new stuff. AND you can use the odd / even-mechanic still in wild if you liked the playstyle. I also read many of the nerf suggestions all over the internet and they were mainly dump crap. The only valid solution were hate cards, which do exist in wild. Any proposed nerf would be deleting the cards in both standard and wild - and I'm very glad they left the option for everyone to use them in wild
2. single player experience - they didn't say that it is a new feature, but they offer a combination of different wishes from the community. At first there will be the free wing giving you everything you had previously with dungeon run. Then you get the possibility of buying you more content (for gold!) and getting some packs in return. And i love that point. There is so much more fun in playing in a mode, when you have the feeling of an achievment. I know, free dungeon run and no reward is the same as paying for the reward with gold, but it feels different and it gives me a reason to play the mode. If I don't like it like the puzzles, than i don't have to play it and I'm not missing anything important to play the game. All in all, you get the free mode AND a pay mode with rewards!
3. Quality of life changes - all of these changes are great and there may come more in the future. There is nothing wrong about it. I really like all of them and you don't have to be salty that your quality of life wishes weren't included. That can change in the future. You see they are listening and I think an ingame deck tracker is more work that has to be done. By the way, I have no problem using a normal deck tracker. So i can wait for them to release one. But there is no way, i can change my card back every game with a tool outside the game. I only wish for some updates on the spectate feature for arena runs (drafting with friends would be so much easier, when they could see the cards I got offered)
4. achievment system - they are listening to us and I think that they will work on an achievment system, but that needs some time and we want a good solution on this. I think our longterm wishes are all considered by them. They give us first the things, they can programm in one month and the rest will follow!
5. new constructed game mode - I think they will test the system with arena and when it works really good, they will consider it for constructed as well. My hopes are high that they will implement something like this in late 2019 - first they have to test interactions between expansions like in the one tavern brawl where the meta got stale after a few days - they have to balance a new constructed mode where you get to play old and new expansions and so you have to wait
TLDR: they gave us very good short term solutions and are showing that they are listening to our wishes - that's the reason I think they are working on the other changes longterm (late 2019)
1. Genn and Baku rotation
I applaud this excellent decision. They had to deal with an unexpected situation that was hurting the Standard gaming experience making it stale and limiting by card design. Look into the nerfs that have been done and how they had to consider how impactful and annoying the odd/even mechanic aspect had to with it. F2p players can rejoice as they are getting 3200 free dust out of it + the epics that rotate that they might have had in the collection and that they were not using. Let's say you had 2 of them. You get 1000 extra free dust as you will disenchant them safely. (I doubt cards like Glitter Moth will work in Wild).
Design space gets to breathe again in the Standard format, and we will get an even more diverse experience because of it along with the rotation of the power-creep expansions. I expect the new Standard format to be a very refreshing experience for a while, we will see.
2. Single player experience.
"Greed". It is a company with people on a pay-roll, the content they create and the people that work on it represent a cost. IT HAS TO BE WORTH. People were buying the old adventures mostly because the content for PvP was worth the cost and was needed to have a fulfilling PvP experience. They were a more P2W oriented model than this. As long as it was entertaining, the replayability factor was really low on those. Dungeon runs are an insane improvement on that obsolete model.
Dungeon runs DO NOT REQUIRE YOU TO HAVE CARDS SPECIFICALLY TO PROGRESS IN THE ADVENTURE, like old adventures. Old adventures were "netdeck the winning strategy to win" for most people probably. They are their own game and it is not taking toll on your personal collection, it actually gives you the chance to enjoy playing cards that you do not own in your collection in the first place, which is amazing.
Old adventures PvE content was not worth the money, that is why they cut them to get new expansions. People wanted to pay for cards.
They want to get money out of people that might be interested in buying PvE content as well, it is perfectly legit.
You want them? You buy them. You don't want to pay for them? You are free to get them f2p with gold for a reasonable trade-off.
You do not give a fuck about PvE content? Enjoy free stuff anyways that you would not receive if the PvE content was not created.
You want everything for free because of unmotivated sense of entitlement? Get lost, if a company would listen and adapt to requests like yours it would fail within a week.
3. Quality of life changes.
They are welcome. Should they have been implemented before? Probably. They put them now? Good.
Also, for how hypocritical it may sound it is actually scientifically convenient for them to mention them as improvements rather than small things. Marketing wise unluckily it is better to not release everything you can at your best, but to always have room for improvements. It is significantly harder to improve Perfect quality content and this creates all the time higher expectations and harder work. Not making everything perfect makes it easier to work. Can this be considered lazy? Yes. Did they have to fix these things because it was what it was chasing people away from the game? No. Better to invest time on other things first, meanwhile you can pop up effortless improvements here and there. A company has to maximise income and good feedback from their playerbase as much as possible in order to be successful. This does not mean to make them happy.
Look at Heroes of the Storm. It was basically the MOBA based on the complaints on League of Legends. They put in the game everything was "wrong" with LoL. Different maps,took away item building, different playstyles within the same hero, they made it much more team oriented, they made it much more easy to access cosmetic content for free, possibility to have an AFK player be commanded as a bot, always adding new things... did it work? Nope.
Free to play games are not deisgned to be perfect if they want to generate income. Deal with the facts. People always want more. To earn more you have to give less. It's the same in lots of human social aspects, even fuckin relationships. You don't have to the best, you have to be good enough with room to get better and close to the best. But if you get to be the best too soon, then you become boring as any further change if you are the best will make you worse. Boredom's a pain in the ass and one of the most detestable human aspects. Yet it exists and has to be dealt with accordingly.
Remember playing Control Shaman with Reincarnate shenanigans? No? It was fun, here's a refresher!
I'd like to point out one fact that people are, maybe, intentionally omitting. They are a company and they want to make as much money as possible with as little effort as possible. This is the way it is. People were expecting zero effort from them because people are used to getting fucked by blizzard. They announced this and people are fapping to it JUST because they never do ANYTHING special. THUS, blizzard is fucking awesome now for those people and the fact that the game is SHIT right now is not talked about anymore. And the way they iced the tournament mode is forgotten. Blizzard won.
These are excellent changes. Combined with the arrest of powercreep we saw in RR, they are finally starting to undo some of the damage that is now clearly attributable to Ben Brode's organizational policies.
Free to try and find a game, dealing cards for sorrow, cards for pain.
People who never change their mind, for good or for worse, are idiots. (not calling anyone out here)
I'm looking forward to these changes and I like that the devs are actually listening to the more experienced hearthstone players instead of what they did with wow.
Why should I be grateful? I pay for a service. I'm considering not paying anymore as I'm not really satisfied with the service. Where is gratefulness coming into the picture?
I can understand what you're trying to say. THere were actualy some good changes BUT we were expecting more.
I still dont get it why they didnt made some achievment features, cosmetic add ons (paid)...
I am okay with those changes...
- in 99 % I do not play arena
- HoF is nice
- random cardback IMO meh (will not use it probably)
- PvE looks nice
EU 11/2015+ , f2p 03/2021+: DK 63 / DH 205 /Dr 277 / Hu 733 / Ma 6666 / Pa 1072 / Pr 1165 / Ro 1791 / Sh 1303 / Wl 707 / Wr 664
This is the kind of discussion I was trying to start and this is what I was looking forward to read. Thank you for sharing. To clarify, I didn't mean the greediness in the case of Genn and Baku, and I'm not sad they are going away to wild (in fact I don't have a problem with that at all) I just feel like they were lazy fixing it, so they chose the most simple solution.
Anyway, I'm more hopeful after reading this, thank you.
Very interesting read, thank you for sharing. I guess you are kinda right.
I'm realy relieved to read all those positive comments here. In the past i got the feeling that people complain way to often.
Maybe the tides are turning for HS again!
They put great effort into the new content and the recent powerdrop will most probably be greatly rewarded soon. Rotating Genn and Baku is only the cherry on the cream.
Ps: Arena will be a blast! It'll be a new gamemode every two months!
The service was worse before, now these were positive changes and you still deny that. Good luck
About Odd|Even - i am more hater them than even Blizz, i want not just nerf those kind of decks, but delete them, i know, it's so radically, but it s really limiting Blizz for future, yes, Wild is for wild, but it's possible Genn and Baku with some very strong Addon wil destroy wild at all.
About Single - i m so tired about ladder and no changes for standart constracted play, so i switched HS into singleplayer game. Last year was not bad, for me, it's great place for spending some 2800 gold for deversity and hard mode and "mutations". Yes, you re right about price increase for people who wants all content, but for me, f*ck new packs, i will buy full single player content.
Like said above, you will got full old content for free too, 1st wing it's 9 classic classes with their typical hero powers and all bosses are avaible and 1 special hero. I don't know 100% sure how they will unlock content, but 1 "wing" will unlock you 2 special heroes with 3 special hero powers for each and 3 decks. About Mutation and hard mode, idk how it will be. But i m excited about it. I think that's enough content for 3-4 months of playing and then new singleplayer adventure.
About last - 100% right, but you re overreacting it, it's pretty whatever. And i m 100% agree, new modes and achievments would be so much better than just improving useless deck builder.
why on earth do you think its greedy to announce the changes to legendary quests and the random cardback option? they were just telling us everything that was changing, thats not greedy, thats just common sense.
Rejoice, for even in death, you have become children of Thanos.
If a man stands on the corner of a street and hands out £20 notes to people passing by, you can guarantee there will still be at least one person like the OP who complains about why man doesn't hand out £50's instead and how dare he expect people to be "grateful" for the free money (Gasp!)
/shakesHead
Random card backs and rerolling legendary quests might be harder than it looks. Yes to you people who don't know how to do programming it all seems so easy. But under the hood it is actually often very hard to do. Also totally should be part of blue post. The more things that are mentioned there the better.
Also the way the phrased problem with Baku and Genn it seemed like they are worried about them only in standard, and are fine with them in wild. Not to mention that there is no good way to fix them. Also there were hundreds of people who suggested to hall of fame them instead of nerfing, so Blizzard did that.
Single player experience. Well a lot of people were not satisfied that there are no incentive. Now there are incentives but you have to pay for it... Well blizzard is still a business, what can you do... 2800 gold isn't that much to pay for 15 packs, 1 golden pack and 1 unique legendary minion.
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