Firstly, although other games are mentioned, I don't intend to turn this thread into an X game is better than Y game, and if it ends up going that way I fully understand the thread being locked.
Anyway I have enjoyed my time with Hearthstone (and will likely continue to do so, only in smaller doses), this isn't a dramatic walkout post, and neither is it meant to be critical against Hearthstone outside of what is necessary to get across my point.
The point of the post is to reach out to others (both card game veterans and those who have only played HS) in an attempt to discuss how Hearthstone 'tricked' me (and potentially others) into assuming certain things about the genre.*
You see back in 2015 HS popped my card game cherry, and because of this everything I know about the genre came almost exclusively from it. Now after finally trying something new (Leagues of Runeterra mainly - thanks to recommendations form this forum, although I have been testing out a few) I've realised that a lot of the things I assumed I would dislike about card games is actually false, as they were based around my lack of understanding of how other games handled those things. Or more accurately in some cases, how Hearthstone doesn't handle them.
The main offender here is minion combat (and/or 'tempo'), something which has very little depth in HS (this was something I had always heard but never fully understood). Because of this I had always assumed that I was a 'control player' and a 'deck builder'. I found aggro/tempo decks boring and I always wanted to feel like I was doing something interesting, something which required me to think. Netdecking an aggro deck just seemed pointless to me, I mean there's still an element of mastering the deck which would take time but that always felt more like I was just following a guide and going through the motions rather than solving a puzzle - I scratched that itch by creating off-meta decks and trying to make them sort of work.
I've realised it's not aggro/tempo that is boring to me however, only Hearthstone's versions of those. If we add complexity to the early game and give players more decisions to make then what was boring can become engaging.
There are two major issues with how minion combat works in my amateur opinion:
The first is that minions have very little survivability, they are vulnerable to spells, rush minions, battlecries/effects, as well as any enemy minion that is in play.
The second issue is that outside of taunts being in play, the aggressive player dictates minion trades. They will trade their minions into something which threatens their advantage, or they will go face if there are now favourable trades. The more defensive player is simply reacting to the leftovers.
To highlight this further I'm going to propose a change. Not a change I expect Blizzard to make, but a change I would like you to imagine in order to better understand Hearthstone's lack of depth in this area:
So imagine if hearthstone had 'battle lanes'. You would choose which lane to summon your minion and then they can only attack straight ahead, or to the lanes immediately to their left and right (minions in the outside lanes could only attack in two directions). If there are no minions in any of those lanes then you may attack face - otherwise you will have to trade first to clear space.
One example I will use is Soothsayer Caravan, an unplayable card because it lack survivability, however with battle lanes, if your opponent coins out a 3/2 on turn 1, you can just pay the Caravan in a safe lane - meaning it would need to be killed by other means. There are countless other scenarios.
The above isn't intended to bring about a discussion of whether this is balanced, or if it would be good for the game, it's just an example intended to help players understand my issues with HS' minion combat (especially those who don't have much card game experience), which is something that only really clicked with me after actually trying another game. This will be obvious to some, especially card game veterans, but maybe some with limited card game experience like myself can get something from it.
I'll leave this here for now, there's more to say but this is already quite long so...
*When I say 'tricked' I don't literally mean Blizzard are intentionally tricking players.
It's good that you understand this, I hope you enjoy the sub-genre you like. Hearthstone is an attacker's choice game, and I hope it always will be, that's why I like it and probably why it has achieved the most success among casual players who want to have fun rather than imagine the possibilities and calculate a million options.
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English is not my native language, so, with a high probability, mistakes were made.
One idea I had was that your minions that didnt attack at the end of your turn would be considered fortified and gain 1 health until the beginning of your next turn.
So minions would all be a little harder to remove before they actually got to do something. And if you can pass on that one damage from your tar creeper it can continue being a 3/6 until it dies.
Artifact basically did this with lanes. Not sure that is the main reason it failed, but isn't it basically a dead game now? I imagine there are games out there with this feature still (maybe even Artifact), But I am one of those who plays nothing else, basically. I may occasionally get the free intro and trial something (did that with Artifact, MtG Arena, etc.), but nothing else has hooked me.
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"Its beyond my control." - Viscount Valmont, as played by John Malkovich, Dangerous Liaisons
One of the things I like about HS is its simplicity. It feels very intuitive to play and its that design which dragged me in. I've always found other games I've tried to be quite tiresome, maybe more so because I tend to play on a phone. Magic's tiny font with paragraphs of text and overly serious looking cards just didn't juice my lemons.
Appreciate your post though and I can't disagree with your thoughts, I just think HS leans in on being clean, simple and easy to pick up and go. I do quite like the lane idea, maybe it could be introduced with something as a mechanic, so it's not committed full time to keeping it but a future game mode or even cards released as part of a set which do these sorts of things to the board, even if it's a start of game effect?
It's good that you understand this, I hope you enjoy the sub-genre you like. Hearthstone is an attacker's choice game, and I hope it always will be, that's why I like it and probably why it has achieved the most success among casual players who want to have fun rather than imagine the possibilities and calculate a million options.
An intricate way to say Hearthstone was made for the mindless masses.
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We make our world significant through the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers.
Such a dramatic change is not worth thinking about, you can't even select 2 targets for the same action.
There is plenty of room for more complex minion battles within the current framework if they want to move in that direction. but we would need more taunts, more trample (excess damage goes face), less manacheating, slower otk combos, more complex deathrattles and less board fills/clears in a single card.
I remember some big priest mirrors where we might have traded off 1000 mana worth of minions each!
It's good that you understand this, I hope you enjoy the sub-genre you like. Hearthstone is an attacker's choice game, and I hope it always will be, that's why I like it and probably why it has achieved the most success among casual players who want to have fun rather than imagine the possibilities and calculate a million options.
An intricate way to say Hearthstone was made for the mindless masses.
It's good that you understand this, I hope you enjoy the sub-genre you like. Hearthstone is an attacker's choice game, and I hope it always will be, that's why I like it and probably why it has achieved the most success among casual players who want to have fun rather than imagine the possibilities and calculate a million options.
An intricate way to say Hearthstone was made for the mindless masses.
Yep, some may not like to hear or read comments like this but it's common knowledge in the game's industry. Very few professionals from the game industry will say it openly. It happened only once, years ago. I was a journalist for a game's magazine and I had the privilege to interview Ken and Roberta Williams founders of Sierra-online which later became Vivendi then Activision Blizzard!! Ken bluntly told me if you want a hit you need to appeal to the mindless masses..in other words a game easy to play...nothing too sophisticated. Blizzard is just giving to the mass what it wants and that's the smart thing to do cause it works and makes money.
It's good that you understand this, I hope you enjoy the sub-genre you like. Hearthstone is an attacker's choice game, and I hope it always will be, that's why I like it and probably why it has achieved the most success among casual players who want to have fun rather than imagine the possibilities and calculate a million options.
An intricate way to say Hearthstone was made for the mindless masses.
Not really, It's about not overcomplicating things. Classical "easy to learn, hard to master" formula. Exaggerated example: some people like 5d chess with multiverse time travel, but more people like normal chess and it's not like chess suffer from lack of depth. Part of the game I consider as made for the mindless masses is arts, animations, emotes etc, everything what covers the game of numbers with sparkles and shinnies, but it's the same for every digital card game and not enough by itself to hook up even casual players.
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English is not my native language, so, with a high probability, mistakes were made.
Hearthstone is intentionally designed with minions that are expendable, in order to make what is in your hand more important.
I've played games with lanes and usually they tend to focus more on minion combat and less on spellslinging. Having both can be too much and lead to a game that is impossible to balance without sacrificing gameplay. MtG has managed to keep a balance, but then that is a game built to be played in person, that suffers in all it's digital iterations.
All in all, it's not a matter of a style being better than the other, it is a matter of personal preference.
Since i play blizzard games since Warcraft 1, im also still here because of the lore.
When it comes to those lanes, its like the chess event in Tavern Brawl which i think is totally boring. Then again, i never played any other card games then HS so i cant compare mechanics. Honestly once i quit HS i hope i never touch a online card game again :D
Well it is probably just me that should move on. But I dislike both ultra slow control matches where you grind value and fatigue so it is probably good that Blizzard chose to kill them (even though I also feel the game ecology lost something with the demise of such decks) but at the same I really dislike what they want to make of the game too. You know midrange minion trading every class plays 95% the same snoozefest.
So what do I even like? Really cool, unusual and innovative decks that win in new ways, like waygate mage, crystal core rogue, spell only mage, miracle rogue, penflinger stealth rogue, patron warrior, ancestral call shaman, freeze mage and meme decks so wonky they were never good. Yeah some of those were OP but they serve to paint a picture, I don't like decks that grind out value, trade minions and bore you to death in the process. Again I realize it might be me who never belonged but I wish all the decks in the meta were amazing, though that is probably unsustainable and you need "boring" aggro, control, etc.
Well it is probably just me that should move on. But I dislike both ultra slow control matches where you grind value and fatigue so it is probably good that Blizzard chose to kill them (even though I also feel the game ecology lost something with the demise of such decks) but at the same I really dislike what they want to make of the game too. You know midrange minion trading every class plays 95% the same snoozefest.
So what do I even like? Really cool, unusual and innovative decks that win in new ways, like waygate mage, crystal core rogue, spell only mage, miracle rogue, penflinger stealth rogue, patron warrior, ancestral call shaman, freeze mage and meme decks so wonky they were never good. Yeah some of those were OP but they serve to paint a picture, I don't like decks that grind out value, trade minions and bore you to death in the process. Again I realize it might be me who never belonged but I wish all the decks in the meta were amazing, though that is probably unsustainable and you need "boring" aggro, control, etc.
The same situation happened with me which is why I decided to finally try out other stuff.
Some great, fun cards rotated from Standard and they haven't been replaced by anything which really interests me, so the game feels really flat to me at the minute. The stuff which I love about the game (like Mogu Cultist) will always come and go but the way Standard is it will always be pot luck whether there is something I will enjoy once 3 expansions have moved to wild.
Since i play blizzard games since Warcraft 1, im also still here because of the lore.
When it comes to those lanes, its like the chess event in Tavern Brawl which i think is totally boring. Then again, i never played any other card games then HS so i cant compare mechanics. Honestly once i quit HS i hope i never touch a online card game again :D
Haha yeah, honestly this was me for a long time too. I LOVE the HS lore (even without ever playing WOW) and that is what dragged me in after seeing an ad for the game. I also could never see myself trying another card game.
Not saying the same will happen to you but it's nice to see I'm not the only one who felt like this!
If you want to play a card game that has some sort of battle lanes (not like you describe, but a front line and a support line), is less aggressor-based (well, to some extent at least), and has meaningful decisions, I would suggest Spellweaver. You will need to endure 5+ min queues, though, because the entire playerbase of the game is like 200 active people, if at all. I have also tried Mythgard at some point, which has a lane system and a freaking 2 vs. 2 mode. No idea why that game never got a crazy high playerbase. I have played so many cool card games in the past and it is sad that most of these great concepts will never be known to so many players because HS and MtG have been the market leaders for forever.
As much as I like HS and the wacky stuff you can do, it usually doesn't work anymore. In wild because the format is way too efficient, and in standard because Blizzard is too scared to print something cool and crazy like Tess, but actually decent (neither broken nor terrible) in terms of winrates. Deck of Lunacy was meant to be that, but we all know how that card's playability went from garbage to top tier.
If only hearthstone was like normal chess, it would be much more complicated than it is now. But what hit me the most is the apparent correlation between aggressive play style and fun. Fun seems to be running down your opponent as fast as possible. Beats me. Some say it is a matter of taste and preference but believe me when I say that it has everything to do with education.
The higher you are educated the less likely you will want to race to victory. It ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it.
In the end there are lots of folks out there that like the game, but dislike the repulsive politics of card design that favor the dominance of a mindlessly aggressive play style, expansion after expansion.
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We make our world significant through the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers.
The OP touches ever so lightly on the real culprit in how HS "tricks" players. At its core, HS is basicallt the card game "War". Where if u plsay a 4, then I play a 5 and win that hand. This goes on till one guy has all the cards.
That would get boring pretty quick wouldnt it? So, Blizzard adds lights, cloors, sound efffects and familiar characters to the game of "War"
But thats still not enough to keep people playing and coming back for more. So they purposely built the game to keep winrates as close to 50% as possible, so every player gets the experience of beating down an opponent by turn 5.
This game is designed to obfuscate the fact that luck of the draw and powere level of the cards, are what determine who wins. NOT SKILL BUT LUCK AND SHEER POWER LEVEL.
Of course there are still basic skills needed to play HS, but nothinnmore than basic addition and subtration, as well as knowing your outs and what % that is. Afterthat, the skill level dissapears and its really about whats the powere level of the deck your playing.
This is how they trick us. Watch a GM tourney any weekend and listen to the casters try and present basic addition into some grand level of skill!! lol I know that their job,I get it. But does anyone else?
Another "trick" Blizzard uses is golden cars, Legendaries etc...all which give little dopamine hits when played or opened in a pack. All these little ways to trick us into believing our skill is what matters, and tricking our brains into needing that dopamine hit over and over again.
without these tools, HS would be a lame boring ass game. But throw some real psychologyb into the game design, make it as addicting as possible, and obfuscate the fsct its mostly luck not skill, and voila! you have a money making engine ypu can rely on.
It's good that you understand this, I hope you enjoy the sub-genre you like. Hearthstone is an attacker's choice game, and I hope it always will be, that's why I like it and probably why it has achieved the most success among casual players who want to have fun rather than imagine the possibilities and calculate a million options.
This guy said it all. Go play gwent, it's very complex
Firstly, although other games are mentioned, I don't intend to turn this thread into an X game is better than Y game, and if it ends up going that way I fully understand the thread being locked.
Anyway I have enjoyed my time with Hearthstone (and will likely continue to do so, only in smaller doses), this isn't a dramatic walkout post, and neither is it meant to be critical against Hearthstone outside of what is necessary to get across my point.
The point of the post is to reach out to others (both card game veterans and those who have only played HS) in an attempt to discuss how Hearthstone 'tricked' me (and potentially others) into assuming certain things about the genre.*
You see back in 2015 HS popped my card game cherry, and because of this everything I know about the genre came almost exclusively from it. Now after finally trying something new (Leagues of Runeterra mainly - thanks to recommendations form this forum, although I have been testing out a few) I've realised that a lot of the things I assumed I would dislike about card games is actually false, as they were based around my lack of understanding of how other games handled those things. Or more accurately in some cases, how Hearthstone doesn't handle them.
The main offender here is minion combat (and/or 'tempo'), something which has very little depth in HS (this was something I had always heard but never fully understood). Because of this I had always assumed that I was a 'control player' and a 'deck builder'. I found aggro/tempo decks boring and I always wanted to feel like I was doing something interesting, something which required me to think. Netdecking an aggro deck just seemed pointless to me, I mean there's still an element of mastering the deck which would take time but that always felt more like I was just following a guide and going through the motions rather than solving a puzzle - I scratched that itch by creating off-meta decks and trying to make them sort of work.
I've realised it's not aggro/tempo that is boring to me however, only Hearthstone's versions of those. If we add complexity to the early game and give players more decisions to make then what was boring can become engaging.
There are two major issues with how minion combat works in my amateur opinion:
The first is that minions have very little survivability, they are vulnerable to spells, rush minions, battlecries/effects, as well as any enemy minion that is in play.
The second issue is that outside of taunts being in play, the aggressive player dictates minion trades. They will trade their minions into something which threatens their advantage, or they will go face if there are now favourable trades. The more defensive player is simply reacting to the leftovers.
To highlight this further I'm going to propose a change. Not a change I expect Blizzard to make, but a change I would like you to imagine in order to better understand Hearthstone's lack of depth in this area:
So imagine if hearthstone had 'battle lanes'. You would choose which lane to summon your minion and then they can only attack straight ahead, or to the lanes immediately to their left and right (minions in the outside lanes could only attack in two directions). If there are no minions in any of those lanes then you may attack face - otherwise you will have to trade first to clear space.
One example I will use is Soothsayer Caravan, an unplayable card because it lack survivability, however with battle lanes, if your opponent coins out a 3/2 on turn 1, you can just pay the Caravan in a safe lane - meaning it would need to be killed by other means. There are countless other scenarios.
The above isn't intended to bring about a discussion of whether this is balanced, or if it would be good for the game, it's just an example intended to help players understand my issues with HS' minion combat (especially those who don't have much card game experience), which is something that only really clicked with me after actually trying another game. This will be obvious to some, especially card game veterans, but maybe some with limited card game experience like myself can get something from it.
I'll leave this here for now, there's more to say but this is already quite long so...
*When I say 'tricked' I don't literally mean Blizzard are intentionally tricking players.
Sounds like you’re describing Elder Scrolls: Legends
The OP touches ever so lightly on the real culprit in how HS "tricks" players. At its core, HS is basicallt the card game "War". Where if u plsay a 4, then I play a 5 and win that hand. This goes on till one guy has all the cards.
That would get boring pretty quick wouldnt it? So, Blizzard adds lights, cloors, sound efffects and familiar characters to the game of "War"
But thats still not enough to keep people playing and coming back for more. So they purposely built the game to keep winrates as close to 50% as possible, so every player gets the experience of beating down an opponent by turn 5.
This game is designed to obfuscate the fact that luck of the draw and powere level of the cards, are what determine who wins. NOT SKILL BUT LUCK AND SHEER POWER LEVEL.
Of course there are still basic skills needed to play HS, but nothinnmore than basic addition and subtration, as well as knowing your outs and what % that is. Afterthat, the skill level dissapears and its really about whats the powere level of the deck your playing.
This is how they trick us. Watch a GM tourney any weekend and listen to the casters try and present basic addition into some grand level of skill!! lol I know that their job,I get it. But does anyone else?
Another "trick" Blizzard uses is golden cars, Legendaries etc...all which give little dopamine hits when played or opened in a pack. All these little ways to trick us into believing our skill is what matters, and tricking our brains into needing that dopamine hit over and over again.
without these tools, HS would be a lame boring ass game. But throw some real psychologyb into the game design, make it as addicting as possible, and obfuscate the fsct its mostly luck not skill, and voila! you have a money making engine ypu can rely on.
If the game is so simple then surely you're getting to top 10 legend every month, right?
Or is Blizzard rigging matchups against you, so there's no way to get past Gold or lower? Which is it?
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Firstly, although other games are mentioned, I don't intend to turn this thread into an X game is better than Y game, and if it ends up going that way I fully understand the thread being locked.
Anyway I have enjoyed my time with Hearthstone (and will likely continue to do so, only in smaller doses), this isn't a dramatic walkout post, and neither is it meant to be critical against Hearthstone outside of what is necessary to get across my point.
The point of the post is to reach out to others (both card game veterans and those who have only played HS) in an attempt to discuss how Hearthstone 'tricked' me (and potentially others) into assuming certain things about the genre.*
You see back in 2015 HS popped my card game cherry, and because of this everything I know about the genre came almost exclusively from it. Now after finally trying something new (Leagues of Runeterra mainly - thanks to recommendations form this forum, although I have been testing out a few) I've realised that a lot of the things I assumed I would dislike about card games is actually false, as they were based around my lack of understanding of how other games handled those things. Or more accurately in some cases, how Hearthstone doesn't handle them.
The main offender here is minion combat (and/or 'tempo'), something which has very little depth in HS (this was something I had always heard but never fully understood). Because of this I had always assumed that I was a 'control player' and a 'deck builder'. I found aggro/tempo decks boring and I always wanted to feel like I was doing something interesting, something which required me to think. Netdecking an aggro deck just seemed pointless to me, I mean there's still an element of mastering the deck which would take time but that always felt more like I was just following a guide and going through the motions rather than solving a puzzle - I scratched that itch by creating off-meta decks and trying to make them sort of work.
I've realised it's not aggro/tempo that is boring to me however, only Hearthstone's versions of those. If we add complexity to the early game and give players more decisions to make then what was boring can become engaging.
There are two major issues with how minion combat works in my amateur opinion:
The first is that minions have very little survivability, they are vulnerable to spells, rush minions, battlecries/effects, as well as any enemy minion that is in play.
The second issue is that outside of taunts being in play, the aggressive player dictates minion trades. They will trade their minions into something which threatens their advantage, or they will go face if there are now favourable trades. The more defensive player is simply reacting to the leftovers.
To highlight this further I'm going to propose a change. Not a change I expect Blizzard to make, but a change I would like you to imagine in order to better understand Hearthstone's lack of depth in this area:
So imagine if hearthstone had 'battle lanes'. You would choose which lane to summon your minion and then they can only attack straight ahead, or to the lanes immediately to their left and right (minions in the outside lanes could only attack in two directions). If there are no minions in any of those lanes then you may attack face - otherwise you will have to trade first to clear space.
One example I will use is Soothsayer Caravan, an unplayable card because it lack survivability, however with battle lanes, if your opponent coins out a 3/2 on turn 1, you can just pay the Caravan in a safe lane - meaning it would need to be killed by other means. There are countless other scenarios.
The above isn't intended to bring about a discussion of whether this is balanced, or if it would be good for the game, it's just an example intended to help players understand my issues with HS' minion combat (especially those who don't have much card game experience), which is something that only really clicked with me after actually trying another game. This will be obvious to some, especially card game veterans, but maybe some with limited card game experience like myself can get something from it.
I'll leave this here for now, there's more to say but this is already quite long so...
*When I say 'tricked' I don't literally mean Blizzard are intentionally tricking players.
It's good that you understand this, I hope you enjoy the sub-genre you like. Hearthstone is an attacker's choice game, and I hope it always will be, that's why I like it and probably why it has achieved the most success among casual players who want to have fun rather than imagine the possibilities and calculate a million options.
English is not my native language, so, with a high probability, mistakes were made.
One idea I had was that your minions that didnt attack at the end of your turn would be considered fortified and gain 1 health until the beginning of your next turn.
So minions would all be a little harder to remove before they actually got to do something. And if you can pass on that one damage from your tar creeper it can continue being a 3/6 until it dies.
Galavant Animation
Artifact basically did this with lanes. Not sure that is the main reason it failed, but isn't it basically a dead game now? I imagine there are games out there with this feature still (maybe even Artifact), But I am one of those who plays nothing else, basically. I may occasionally get the free intro and trial something (did that with Artifact, MtG Arena, etc.), but nothing else has hooked me.
"Its beyond my control." - Viscount Valmont, as played by John Malkovich, Dangerous Liaisons
One of the things I like about HS is its simplicity. It feels very intuitive to play and its that design which dragged me in. I've always found other games I've tried to be quite tiresome, maybe more so because I tend to play on a phone. Magic's tiny font with paragraphs of text and overly serious looking cards just didn't juice my lemons.
Appreciate your post though and I can't disagree with your thoughts, I just think HS leans in on being clean, simple and easy to pick up and go. I do quite like the lane idea, maybe it could be introduced with something as a mechanic, so it's not committed full time to keeping it but a future game mode or even cards released as part of a set which do these sorts of things to the board, even if it's a start of game effect?
An intricate way to say Hearthstone was made for the mindless masses.
We make our world significant through the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers.
Such a dramatic change is not worth thinking about, you can't even select 2 targets for the same action.
There is plenty of room for more complex minion battles within the current framework if they want to move in that direction. but we would need more taunts, more trample (excess damage goes face), less manacheating, slower otk combos, more complex deathrattles and less board fills/clears in a single card.
I remember some big priest mirrors where we might have traded off 1000 mana worth of minions each!
Editor of the Heartpwn Legendary Crafting Guide:
https://www.hearthpwn.com/forums/hearthstone-general/card-discussion/205920-legendary-tier-list-crafting-guide
That made me laugh, but it is true. :P
Yep, some may not like to hear or read comments like this but it's common knowledge in the game's industry. Very few professionals from the game industry will say it openly. It happened only once, years ago. I was a journalist for a game's magazine and I had the privilege to interview Ken and Roberta Williams founders of Sierra-online which later became Vivendi then Activision Blizzard!! Ken bluntly told me if you want a hit you need to appeal to the mindless masses..in other words a game easy to play...nothing too sophisticated. Blizzard is just giving to the mass what it wants and that's the smart thing to do cause it works and makes money.
Not really, It's about not overcomplicating things. Classical "easy to learn, hard to master" formula. Exaggerated example: some people like 5d chess with multiverse time travel, but more people like normal chess and it's not like chess suffer from lack of depth. Part of the game I consider as made for the mindless masses is arts, animations, emotes etc, everything what covers the game of numbers with sparkles and shinnies, but it's the same for every digital card game and not enough by itself to hook up even casual players.
English is not my native language, so, with a high probability, mistakes were made.
Hearthstone is intentionally designed with minions that are expendable, in order to make what is in your hand more important.
I've played games with lanes and usually they tend to focus more on minion combat and less on spellslinging. Having both can be too much and lead to a game that is impossible to balance without sacrificing gameplay. MtG has managed to keep a balance, but then that is a game built to be played in person, that suffers in all it's digital iterations.
All in all, it's not a matter of a style being better than the other, it is a matter of personal preference.
Since i play blizzard games since Warcraft 1, im also still here because of the lore.
When it comes to those lanes, its like the chess event in Tavern Brawl which i think is totally boring. Then again, i never played any other card games then HS so i cant compare mechanics. Honestly once i quit HS i hope i never touch a online card game again :D
Well it is probably just me that should move on. But I dislike both ultra slow control matches where you grind value and fatigue so it is probably good that Blizzard chose to kill them (even though I also feel the game ecology lost something with the demise of such decks) but at the same I really dislike what they want to make of the game too. You know midrange minion trading every class plays 95% the same snoozefest.
So what do I even like? Really cool, unusual and innovative decks that win in new ways, like waygate mage, crystal core rogue, spell only mage, miracle rogue, penflinger stealth rogue, patron warrior, ancestral call shaman, freeze mage and meme decks so wonky they were never good. Yeah some of those were OP but they serve to paint a picture, I don't like decks that grind out value, trade minions and bore you to death in the process. Again I realize it might be me who never belonged but I wish all the decks in the meta were amazing, though that is probably unsustainable and you need "boring" aggro, control, etc.
The same situation happened with me which is why I decided to finally try out other stuff.
Some great, fun cards rotated from Standard and they haven't been replaced by anything which really interests me, so the game feels really flat to me at the minute. The stuff which I love about the game (like Mogu Cultist) will always come and go but the way Standard is it will always be pot luck whether there is something I will enjoy once 3 expansions have moved to wild.
Haha yeah, honestly this was me for a long time too. I LOVE the HS lore (even without ever playing WOW) and that is what dragged me in after seeing an ad for the game. I also could never see myself trying another card game.
Not saying the same will happen to you but it's nice to see I'm not the only one who felt like this!
If you want to play a card game that has some sort of battle lanes (not like you describe, but a front line and a support line), is less aggressor-based (well, to some extent at least), and has meaningful decisions, I would suggest Spellweaver. You will need to endure 5+ min queues, though, because the entire playerbase of the game is like 200 active people, if at all. I have also tried Mythgard at some point, which has a lane system and a freaking 2 vs. 2 mode. No idea why that game never got a crazy high playerbase. I have played so many cool card games in the past and it is sad that most of these great concepts will never be known to so many players because HS and MtG have been the market leaders for forever.
As much as I like HS and the wacky stuff you can do, it usually doesn't work anymore. In wild because the format is way too efficient, and in standard because Blizzard is too scared to print something cool and crazy like Tess, but actually decent (neither broken nor terrible) in terms of winrates. Deck of Lunacy was meant to be that, but we all know how that card's playability went from garbage to top tier.
If only hearthstone was like normal chess, it would be much more complicated than it is now. But what hit me the most is the apparent correlation between aggressive play style and fun. Fun seems to be running down your opponent as fast as possible. Beats me. Some say it is a matter of taste and preference but believe me when I say that it has everything to do with education.
The higher you are educated the less likely you will want to race to victory. It ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it.
In the end there are lots of folks out there that like the game, but dislike the repulsive politics of card design that favor the dominance of a mindlessly aggressive play style, expansion after expansion.
We make our world significant through the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers.
The OP touches ever so lightly on the real culprit in how HS "tricks" players. At its core, HS is basicallt the card game "War". Where if u plsay a 4, then I play a 5 and win that hand. This goes on till one guy has all the cards.
That would get boring pretty quick wouldnt it? So, Blizzard adds lights, cloors, sound efffects and familiar characters to the game of "War"
But thats still not enough to keep people playing and coming back for more. So they purposely built the game to keep winrates as close to 50% as possible, so every player gets the experience of beating down an opponent by turn 5.
This game is designed to obfuscate the fact that luck of the draw and powere level of the cards, are what determine who wins. NOT SKILL BUT LUCK AND SHEER POWER LEVEL.
Of course there are still basic skills needed to play HS, but nothinnmore than basic addition and subtration, as well as knowing your outs and what % that is. Afterthat, the skill level dissapears and its really about whats the powere level of the deck your playing.
This is how they trick us. Watch a GM tourney any weekend and listen to the casters try and present basic addition into some grand level of skill!! lol I know that their job,I get it. But does anyone else?
Another "trick" Blizzard uses is golden cars, Legendaries etc...all which give little dopamine hits when played or opened in a pack. All these little ways to trick us into believing our skill is what matters, and tricking our brains into needing that dopamine hit over and over again.
without these tools, HS would be a lame boring ass game. But throw some real psychologyb into the game design, make it as addicting as possible, and obfuscate the fsct its mostly luck not skill, and voila! you have a money making engine ypu can rely on.
This guy said it all. Go play gwent, it's very complex
Sounds like you’re describing Elder Scrolls: Legends
If the game is so simple then surely you're getting to top 10 legend every month, right?
Or is Blizzard rigging matchups against you, so there's no way to get past Gold or lower? Which is it?