When the 3 expansions that are rotating were in standard.
Excessive draw, global mana reduction, reneging on the Leroy type burst from hand. Combos were specifically printed to OTK on turn 8 or earlier.
IDK if power level is the issue. Frozen Throne was awesome even with Raza Priest. Cause Raza Priest was not online turn 6 like the combo stuff is now. Hearthstone will be great again with draw that isn't insane, cards need to cost appropriate mana. I think Hearthstone is really close to being great again with these 3 expansions leaving standard.
General lack of interactivity is the problem. OTKs, from-hand wombo combos, lack of minions (it seems like the majority of decks these days have fewer than 5 minions in them.. remember when spells were rare and not the norm unless you were playing mage?).. it's more like two people playing solitaire at each other than an actual interactive card game.
If I had to point out two culprits in particular as for where it started to all go wrong, I'd say Rush and Discover. Now, on their own, these two mechanics are solid concepts; the problem is the lack of restrictions with both.
Rush itself was a good idea. They needed something that was Charge-like, but not as powerful as Charge. The problem with Rush is two-fold: it's too cheap and too prevalent. Every card with Rush could probably stand to be at least 1 mana higher. The other issue is they started slapping Rush on -everything-, and as a consequence, board presence mattered less and less. That Animated Broomstick ever got printed absolutely boggles my mind.
As for Discover, it's a fun idea, but the problem lies in its impact on the importance of deck construction, and its inherent limitations. Each Discover you're able to place in a deck, especially if the pool of discoverable options isn't sufficiently limited, compounds the restricting factors that deckbuilding is supposed to have.
I think it was when ben brode quit, like after gadgetzen the expansions became worse and worse.
So tired of hearing this argument. Objectively looking at some of the expansions Ben was responsible for, we've had far worse metas than we have now. Ben Brode wasn't some kind of holy grail in Hearthstone's development but was rather a man with his own beliefs for what the game should be. The same goes for the team now. Is the game perfect? No. But can you really make a game like Hearthstone perfect, to everyone's subjective opinions? No.
What strikes me as even more incomprehensible, is why someone would play a game they no longer think is fun or interesting. If you want to keep playing but are unsure of the direction, take a break and hop back in when the game is more to your liking.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Proud Dad of 2, Husband & Competitive Gamer Overwatch 2, Hearthstone, Heroes & Starcraft II Flexible Support, Control Main & Protoss Expert
Where do you believe the game went from being fun and engaging to not fun and frustrating?
The short answer is never for me. It all depends on what you consider fun. I think its fun to create the best deck to win. Each expansion makes sure that aspect of the game never goes away.
But if you think that finding some deck that someone else has made and winning a great majority of the time is the only way to have fun, you might disagree with me.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Dust does not burn a hole in the jar. Be careful what you craft, especially before and right after a rotation.
I still have fun with Hearthstone. I just didn't like the sets that will be rotating soon. Hearthstone is still a fun game for me, but I only ever really play Wild and Battlegrounds now. Hopefully I'll be able to get back into the swing of things with the rotation and new expansion. I still buy everything I can because I enjoy the game.
The blizzard defenders will try and gaslight you and tell you that Hearthstone does not employ the same manipulations and principles, but if you have played for any length of time and taken a good look at what happens, you will know that Hearthstone (all modes) is BS.
I still have tons of fun with Hearthstone. If i didn't, I wouldn't play.
It's fun to see how people's perception of past metas change as time passes. I remember when everyone HATED the Gadgetzan meta with Patches the Pirate and pre-nerf Small-Time Buccaneer. So many decks ran the Pirate package that they literally printed a hate card the next expansion in the form of Golakka Crawler. Or how about jade Druid? That too had a hate card printed to deal with it.
People complain about power creep, but there has been soooo many busted cards throughout the years, so many frustrating decks to play against - and, for me, so many fun, crazy moments that it's kept me playing for almost six years.
I don't think about this in terms of turning points. What people tend to ignore is their own game fatigue and chasing that feeling they had in the past when they had great success with a fun deck they enjoyed and the game felt fresh (because it was to them). And change is the name of this game and so it's not reasonable to expect every mechanic or deckbuilding direction, new or old, to appeal to everyone. And, the game is not new anymore, you played it for years and that also affects your judgment.
When I find the game most enjoyable is with decks that have a chance to win against most/all decks in the meta. 40/60 matchup split is terrible but I take that over 20/80 and then reversed when playing against another class. Rock, paper, scissor is what I resent; I queue up against Kazakus Druid now and I know that I will lose with very little scope to make a dent (with decks I enjoy playing). But then I steamroll through other matchups. The closest to balanced now is Burn Shaman, followed by Quest Rogue for me and those are the two decks I still enjoy somewhat. I'd love to play more Quest Hunter but the extreme polarisation of that deck makes it unbearable to me. With this game, it is always a balancing issue.
Witchwood. That's the first year of OTK dominance with Cubelock, Shudderwock Shaman, etc. I quit at that time and came back in January, hoping it had improved from then. It had not.
It's been a while that i play once in a season just to get legend and never touch it again, i honestly cant remember last time i played consistently after reach legend, problably years ago.
But i still have hope in the game cause i love it.
There were a few turning points for me. The first one was Jade Idol, terrible card. The second one was The Demon Seed, also awful. Beside that, i have a lot of fun mostly. BG gives a lot of diversity in the game.
I think, for me, it began with the introduction of quests. As a F2P player quests are just too expensive. It was like I went from being able to play half the classes to a quarter.
This is probably by design.
But desired by the company or not, having legendaries be so central to deck creation makes the game much less affordable. And affordability has been the thing driving me away.
There was a time when you could usually find a replacement for a legendary. It may not have been as good, but you could still limp along.
Having SO MANY legendaries as build around cards seems wrong to me. Maybe 4 of them a set would be manageable but not 10.
When Blizz sold me 130€ pre-order for mercenaries, without fixing it. Then I started feeling really screwed.
This was for me the biggest turning point. If the game company that I pay in order to have fun fuck me it is not fun anymore. My pocket will be closed forever for Blizz, at least I don't see astonishing thing.
Where do you believe the game went from being fun and engaging to not fun and frustrating?
When the 3 expansions that are rotating were in standard.
Excessive draw, global mana reduction, reneging on the Leroy type burst from hand. Combos were specifically printed to OTK on turn 8 or earlier.
IDK if power level is the issue. Frozen Throne was awesome even with Raza Priest. Cause Raza Priest was not online turn 6 like the combo stuff is now. Hearthstone will be great again with draw that isn't insane, cards need to cost appropriate mana. I think Hearthstone is really close to being great again with these 3 expansions leaving standard.
Mr. Smite has to go though. That card is so dumb
I think it was when ben brode quit, like after gadgetzen the expansions became worse and worse.
General lack of interactivity is the problem. OTKs, from-hand wombo combos, lack of minions (it seems like the majority of decks these days have fewer than 5 minions in them.. remember when spells were rare and not the norm unless you were playing mage?).. it's more like two people playing solitaire at each other than an actual interactive card game.
If I had to point out two culprits in particular as for where it started to all go wrong, I'd say Rush and Discover. Now, on their own, these two mechanics are solid concepts; the problem is the lack of restrictions with both.
Rush itself was a good idea. They needed something that was Charge-like, but not as powerful as Charge. The problem with Rush is two-fold: it's too cheap and too prevalent. Every card with Rush could probably stand to be at least 1 mana higher. The other issue is they started slapping Rush on -everything-, and as a consequence, board presence mattered less and less. That Animated Broomstick ever got printed absolutely boggles my mind.
As for Discover, it's a fun idea, but the problem lies in its impact on the importance of deck construction, and its inherent limitations. Each Discover you're able to place in a deck, especially if the pool of discoverable options isn't sufficiently limited, compounds the restricting factors that deckbuilding is supposed to have.
So tired of hearing this argument. Objectively looking at some of the expansions Ben was responsible for, we've had far worse metas than we have now. Ben Brode wasn't some kind of holy grail in Hearthstone's development but was rather a man with his own beliefs for what the game should be. The same goes for the team now. Is the game perfect? No. But can you really make a game like Hearthstone perfect, to everyone's subjective opinions? No.
What strikes me as even more incomprehensible, is why someone would play a game they no longer think is fun or interesting. If you want to keep playing but are unsure of the direction, take a break and hop back in when the game is more to your liking.
Proud Dad of 2, Husband & Competitive Gamer
Overwatch 2, Hearthstone, Heroes & Starcraft II
Flexible Support, Control Main & Protoss Expert
Check out my latest Theorycrafts for March of the Lich King!
Big Vanndar Shaman | No Minion Relic Demon Hunter | Undead Deathrattle Rogue
The short answer is never for me. It all depends on what you consider fun. I think its fun to create the best deck to win. Each expansion makes sure that aspect of the game never goes away.
But if you think that finding some deck that someone else has made and winning a great majority of the time is the only way to have fun, you might disagree with me.
Dust does not burn a hole in the jar. Be careful what you craft, especially before and right after a rotation.
I still have fun with Hearthstone. I just didn't like the sets that will be rotating soon. Hearthstone is still a fun game for me, but I only ever really play Wild and Battlegrounds now. Hopefully I'll be able to get back into the swing of things with the rotation and new expansion. I still buy everything I can because I enjoy the game.
Reno Jackson. Polarized the fuck out things. I played only Wild at low ranks for daily quests until Battlegrounds came and now I play mostly that.
When Activision acquired King and moved further toward a controlled simulated game engineered to inspire spending rather than an actual game. Candy Crush was exposed years ago https://www.overthinkingit.com/2013/09/05/candy-crush/,
The blizzard defenders will try and gaslight you and tell you that Hearthstone does not employ the same manipulations and principles, but if you have played for any length of time and taken a good look at what happens, you will know that Hearthstone (all modes) is BS.
I still have tons of fun with Hearthstone. If i didn't, I wouldn't play.
It's fun to see how people's perception of past metas change as time passes. I remember when everyone HATED the Gadgetzan meta with Patches the Pirate and pre-nerf Small-Time Buccaneer. So many decks ran the Pirate package that they literally printed a hate card the next expansion in the form of Golakka Crawler. Or how about jade Druid? That too had a hate card printed to deal with it.
People complain about power creep, but there has been soooo many busted cards throughout the years, so many frustrating decks to play against - and, for me, so many fun, crazy moments that it's kept me playing for almost six years.
I don't think about this in terms of turning points. What people tend to ignore is their own game fatigue and chasing that feeling they had in the past when they had great success with a fun deck they enjoyed and the game felt fresh (because it was to them). And change is the name of this game and so it's not reasonable to expect every mechanic or deckbuilding direction, new or old, to appeal to everyone. And, the game is not new anymore, you played it for years and that also affects your judgment.
When I find the game most enjoyable is with decks that have a chance to win against most/all decks in the meta. 40/60 matchup split is terrible but I take that over 20/80 and then reversed when playing against another class. Rock, paper, scissor is what I resent; I queue up against Kazakus Druid now and I know that I will lose with very little scope to make a dent (with decks I enjoy playing). But then I steamroll through other matchups. The closest to balanced now is Burn Shaman, followed by Quest Rogue for me and those are the two decks I still enjoy somewhat. I'd love to play more Quest Hunter but the extreme polarisation of that deck makes it unbearable to me. With this game, it is always a balancing issue.
Witchwood. That's the first year of OTK dominance with Cubelock, Shudderwock Shaman, etc. I quit at that time and came back in January, hoping it had improved from then. It had not.
It's been a while that i play once in a season just to get legend and never touch it again, i honestly cant remember last time i played consistently after reach legend, problably years ago.
But i still have hope in the game cause i love it.
There were a few turning points for me. The first one was Jade Idol, terrible card. The second one was The Demon Seed, also awful. Beside that, i have a lot of fun mostly. BG gives a lot of diversity in the game.
fail
I think, for me, it began with the introduction of quests. As a F2P player quests are just too expensive. It was like I went from being able to play half the classes to a quarter.
This is probably by design.
But desired by the company or not, having legendaries be so central to deck creation makes the game much less affordable. And affordability has been the thing driving me away.
There was a time when you could usually find a replacement for a legendary. It may not have been as good, but you could still limp along.
Having SO MANY legendaries as build around cards seems wrong to me. Maybe 4 of them a set would be manageable but not 10.
I think its the whole system of rock, paper - scissors - in combination with easy and quick games, that they enforce.
I would prefer a turn around card that lets you change the outcome and still gives you a chance to win, not overpowered just a slight chance.
And please no more friggin simple quests like pirates or fatique WL. But thats how it is to reach a bigger audience. Its not about the game.
When Blizz sold me 130€ pre-order for mercenaries, without fixing it. Then I started feeling really screwed.
This was for me the biggest turning point. If the game company that I pay in order to have fun fuck me it is not fun anymore. My pocket will be closed forever for Blizz, at least I don't see astonishing thing.
It was 2029 for me, in fact 2022 was my favorite year of cards period.