Hey people, I decided to open my first thread ever in any HS forum because there is something that's bothering me quite a bit. Playing HS since its release and following the discussions here and in other forums from time to time I've seen the topic of the infamous "Boring Meta" where someone complains about x amount of decks being the best and if you want to be successful you absolutely have to play those an innumerable amount of times. And obviously Team5 is responsible for that because they have to be complete morons and don't know anything about balancing their game. To those guys I just wanted to say: You're wrong.
I have always been a (T)CG enthusiast and to me one integral part of these card games is experimenting and creating decks on your own. Yeah sure, you gotta get in the winning column eventually, atleast in my books, to get the motivation to play a deck for an extended time. But contrary to what seems to be popular belief, this does not require you to go to hsreplay, hearthpwn or whatever other site you get your meta information from and search out the one meta deck that doesn't make you hate yourself while playing it until legend. Instead I'd like to challenge people to get creative again, some good old "Trial and Error" picking a unique deck idea that they came up with on their own, try to refine it and eventually have success with it. That's how I get my drive to climb to legend every season since the release of Darkmoon Faire (came back from a year-long break).
Sure, not every deck will work. If your favorite card from an expansion is trash and there is no possible way to build around it to make it work outside of the occasional super mega highroll, that's unfortunate. But there is much more to Hearthstone than the 2-3 meta decks that get all the spotlight. Take Voyage to the Sunken City: DH, Control Warrior, Quest Hunter and some Mechs, that seems to be what the game consists of right now. And as per usual, people prefer to complain about those decks being too strong, draining the fun from the game instead of taking it as a motivation to beat those decks. The problem here is Net Decking.
Okay, I understand that if you don't have the time to do a lot of trying out and refining your own deck ideas, getting some help from the online herd intelligence is nice. Also if you are not the best player, feeling the need to pick out the one deck that seems to be the absolute strongest right now is understandable. But what if I told you that I made it to legend without those preselected decks, using my own ones and it is the most fun you can have. Beating those netdeckers with your own creation feels amazing!
Recently I have mostly been playing
Quest Druid (with my own list, using e.g. Wickerclaw) which beats DH, all kinds of Warrior AND Quest Hunter most of the time while still having feasible matchups against everything else. It's not as rare as the other decks but it's still pretty clear to me that it doesn't get the attention it deserves strength-wise because it beats the most popular decks. Why? Because somehow it doesn't show up on hsreplay.
Murloc Shaman which beats DH most of the time, admittedly is very bad against CW, has okay chances against Quest Hunter but beats everthing else from Mechs over Pirates to Druids. I've only seen one opponent ever playing this deck on ladder.
Serpent Wig Priest, my absolute favorite deck of the expansion. It took me about a 3 or 4 days to refine it, making it able to beat DH, Warrior, Hunter, Druid and all the mechs but now it is probably the most fun I ever had with HS. My explanation to why it is such a strong deck but nobody even seems to know about it, is because noone ever tried to make it work on their own. I am currently on a 8-2 run with the deck and I wouldn't have gotten that experience, had I relied only on what showed up in the meta reports.
Obviously I am not the only person that's trying to create cool and unique competitive decks - content creators like Kibler for example are highlighting new successful decks on a regular basis - but I am sure that if more people followed the same idea we would reach a point of variety that's unheard of.
What I’m trying to say is: it is not (entirely) Team5's fault that the game is what it is right now and that it seems to be stale and very restricting in deck building. It's the community that makes the game what it is right now and a main part of that is Net Decking and just "stealing" ideas, making it easy for yourself. There is a lot of untapped potential within the cards that are currently available and it should be our motivation to use that to make HS a game with even more variety than it already has. I would love to hear your ideas on this topic!
tl;dr: Net Decking is the reason for a stale and boring Meta. There are more than enough options to make new AND competitive decks right now and if more people took their time to figure out beating the Meta using unique strategies, we would have a much more interesting and evolving game.
devil advocate here but you need to take f2p into consideration. its easier to experiment when you have tons of cards or simply all cards. when you are limited then you tend to craft what s cheap and is battletested (netdeck) to give you maximum season card packs (ex: naga dh) and way to navigate in the meta if needed
i agree that given the amount of cards, there are still "unfound" viable decks (+1 for your wig priest). but hey we see new deck from time to time here on hpwn so why so negative ? :)
just a remark to bold my point: what is the dust cost of viable wig priest ? :)
nice writeup! I also had amazing fun with homebrews, unfortunately they were never competitive so I was goofing around in casual and having a great time - right now it's a Naga Ignite Quest Mage where you try to OTK your opponent with Sanctum Chandler and Hot Streak :)
Still want to hit legend one day with a homebrew, so far the closest thing was a Galakrond Warlock that included Lorekeeper Polkelt and Animated Broomstick.
PS: I'd be happy to try out you Serpent Wig Priest deck!
First of all I just wanted to say that I didn't want to sound all too negative but I understand where that impression comes from haha
You're absolutely right, the available cards to oneself play a big role, so if you're a f2p player or returning from a long break you might need most of your dust to get A deck and cannot afford to try stuff out and that's absolutely fine. My intention was to reach out to those players that have the ressources to experiment with cards and maybe give them motivation for some DIY.
My Wig Priest costs about 5k dust. I'll post a decklist below
nice writeup! I also had amazing fun with homebrews, unfortunately they were never competitive so I was goofing around in casual and having a great time - right now it's a Naga Ignite Quest Mage where you try to OTK your opponent with Sanctum Chandler and Hot Streak :)
Still want to hit legend one day with a homebrew, so far the closest thing was a Galakrond Warlock that included Lorekeeper Polkelt and Animated Broomstick.
PS: I'd be happy to try out you Serpent Wig Priest deck!
I appreciate everyone who is trying out new stuff! Interesting that you played around with Sanctum Chandler, I also tried to make it work with Ignite and all the other cheap spells but so far only limited success unfortunately. Might try again next season :)
You can find my decklist for the Serpent Wig Priest here:
I think it's wrong to see netdecking as a problem. Lots of people don't have a ton of cards and want to invest their dust wisely, lots of people don't enjoy experimenting and theorycrafting, and lots of people quite frankly are not good players and hence have to rely on a familiar powerful deck to climb.
Instead of viewing netdecking as a problem, see it as an opportunity. The more predictable the meta, the easier it is to counter with homebrew. If everyone just played random stuff there would be no room for tech cards and it wouldn't be possible for certain decks to thrive that are built specifically to beat a predictable meta.
That said, balance can be a problem, specifically when decks are both strong and lack easily exploitable weaknesses. I feel like pre-nerf Druid was such a deck, since it was nigh unbeatable unless you played aggro, creating a very narrow meta that is hostile to experimentation. DH on the other hand isn't that bad, aside from an on-curve Drek'thar there is nothing unbeatable about that deck, there are plenty of ways to either out-tempo or out-heal your way to victory.
There is no doubt that the HS team, in the past, was very creative and they created a very cool game. This time is ended. HS is losing interest for years now and the only real innovative past thing was BG.
I don't know until when it will be played, and I am not saying that it is dying, but for sure it is going very bad and in a scary direction. The main reason in my opinion is exactly the opposite of what you wrote and therefore: Team 5 is not creative at all like now.
The biggest mistake that they are doing is that they keep printing cards without a real direction. This game will not become funnier with more cards that are more or less the same, or past reprints. This game is out since 2014, and now, it is time for big changes in the whole structure of the game, otherwise, the interest in this game will always be more and more asymptotic at 0, until one day it will be 0.
It is time for big changes. I only hope that it is not already too late.
Chart: HS's web search (from 01/01/2014 to 17/05/2021)
Chart: HS's web search compared to the major card games (from 01/01/2014 to 17/05/2021)
Chart: HS's search on Youtube compared to the major card games (from 01/01/2014 to 17/05/2021)
tl;dr: Net Decking is the reason for a stale and boring Meta. There are more than enough options to make new AND competitive decks right now and if more people took their time to figure out beating the Meta using unique strategies, we would have a much more interesting and evolving game.
But the fact is most people will just play the best / most popular decks in ranked and as there is ONLY ranked...
Hearthstone really could use a mode where you face non meta decks. Maybe based on a deck rating based on card value paired with a deck rating from your opponent.
And i keep repeating myself, but Heartstone really could use more game modes like MtG's pauper and peasant or have a mode with like 3 blocks which change every other month (i believe they already suggested something like this?).
So, regarding also the Team 5's work. The conclusion based on the charts above for me is obvious. People are interested overall in card games, therefore there is demand. HS is the only card game that is going with this terrible trend. So, Team 5 's work is terrible. They are not able to meet people's expectations and what they want.
They started with an amazing idea (which initially broke the market) and they seem not able to keep it alive with good standards.
So, regarding also the Team 5's work. The conclusion based on the charts above for me is obvious. People are interested overall in card games, therefore there is demand. HS is the only card game that is going with this terrible trend. So, Team 5 's work is terrible. They are not able to meet people's expectations and what they want.
They started with an amazing idea (which initially broke the market) and they seem not able to keep it alive with good standards.
Hearthstone is still the top on your charts for a digital only card game. How many searches for MTG or Yu Gi Oh are for prerelease locations, card values, draft guides, pack contents, fnm locations or rewards…. Of course the searches are biased toward physical games. Your argument for no new ideas is the same one MTG has had for years, everything is kicker… or horsemanship. Sure there has been quite a bit of pack filler and duds but it’s not nearly as bad as you make it out. I think they need to learn from their design mistakes and settle the rift between design and marketing, but HS has a decent community and has been doing pretty good. I agree with you 100% on mercenaries though, that traded good will and player interest for money.
Instead of viewing netdecking as a problem, see it as an opportunity. The more predictable the meta, the easier it is to counter with homebrew. If everyone just played random stuff there would be no room for tech cards and it wouldn't be possible for certain decks to thrive that are built specifically to beat a predictable meta.
Having a meta game where 95% of players are net decking AND getting a clue by seeing your opponents class before the mulligan every game makes it relatively easy to predict what style of deck your opponent is going to play. Especially as there usually is only one (max. two) deck per class that is considered to be competitive. And that makes it quite boring in my eyes. I wouldn't mind it at all if "everyone just played random stuff" because that would make the game a much more interesting experience. And the choices you make during mulligan have to be made with much more scenarios in mind and become really important.
Besides that, let's be real: tech cards do not play that big of a role already. Weapon removal is used by some decks but even Smothering Starfish plays such a minor role in the meta even though a neutral board-wide silence looks absolutely busted on paper. I even think they might play a bigger role with a wider variety of used decks because there's a bigger chance that some "random" weapon strategy, deathrattle synergy or big buffed minions might catch you off guard...
There is no doubt that the HS team, in the past, was very creative and they created a very cool game. This time is ended. HS is losing interest for years now and the only real innovative past thing was BG.
[...]
The biggest mistake that they are doing is that they keep printing cards without a real direction. This game will not become funnier with more cards that are more or less the same, or past reprints. This game is out since 2014, and now, it is time for big changes in the whole structure of the game, otherwise, the interest in this game will always be more and more asymptotic at 0, until one day it will be 0.
I agree that a shrinking player base indicates that something is wrong with game. And it obviously is, otherwise I wouldn't have started this discussion. But I still think that even though we as the players depend on the developers to provide us with exciting content that we can build upon, it's the community that decides the fate of a game. Yes, Team5 looks to be slow when it comes to necessary balance changes. Yes, recent "innovations" like mercenaries failed to revive the game as a whole. But as others already mentioned, in terms of a digital-only card game, HS is still the market leader.
Legends of Runeterra is comparable to HS as the game that it is based on is atleast as big as WOW and even though it is much younger, it never even came close to the size of HS. Another point someone else mentioned is that a lot of the attention other big TCGs like Magic and Yu-Gi-Oh receive comes from the actual TRADING part of those games that HS simply doesn't have as well as from all the offline action. And now that I think about it, there probably lies one of the main problems: there is no official tournament scene for your average, non-professional HS player.
A major part of the constant interest in Magic and Yu-Gi-Oh lies in locals, regionals and major events where everyone can chase their childhood dream of becoming a successful duelist by winning a big tournament out of nothing. I guess for a digital card it is close to impossible to set such tournaments up on a regular basis with professional standards but if there was something like that I am sure it would boost the interest in HS quite a bit.
you have good points there. disabling Fireside gatherings didn't help. still surprised that such a game got no chat during standard play. cant talk to your stranger opponent ? ok :/ wtf? people are now even pushing for auto squelsh and bots ... also HS is purely solo game. 1v1 at max, no team, nothing. even chess has team gamemodes lol. missing the whole point of games in general :D
having little and poor "roots in reality", purely virtual, might be def a downside for HS yep, agreed. There are other warcraft realworld TCG to the rescue.
If not for experimentation and deck building I would have left the game years ago, because there aren't that many of us out there, especially in better ranks, it's hard to have fun alone sometimes. I almost hate it when they release new mechanics that greatly improve old decks, because I always have reasons to try something else in Wild. Possibilities never end no matter the class. Dredge for example, and sir finley to an extent, vastly improved decks that heavily rely on draw order to simply function, like dragon rogue. And every new card makes you want to slightly alter your deck to better fit said new cards so you end up play testing with even more cards.
I hardly ever play more than 3 games in a row without altering my deck or playing another one. Still climbing.
Yes. HS is still the most played card game online. Anyway, if we take a closer look at what is played, it is quite clear that BG is the leader. So, the interest in HS is decreasing, BG is what keeps HS up. Again, we can argue that Team 5's work is not that good.
Therefore, without BG, I am not sure if HS is still the most played online card game. My guess is no. If we remove BG which is nearby alone half of HS's share (if not more), HS would be below Runeterra and Magic or at least, all 3 would be close by.
However, what is certainly true is that HS is no longer the undisputed leader of years ago. And that's a good thing, competition increases quality. But also a bad thing, because it can no longer lose all the ground it has lost in the past (otherwise the risk is to go out of the market).
So, my opinion is the same. It is time for big changes, this game will get boring. Interaction with the surroundings, graveyard, interactions in the opponent's turn, pieces of equipment, a lot of things can be done, imagination is the only limit. If Team 5 will sleep, then it may be late.
Hearthstone doing a good job (well, better than 7 years ago) in terms of diversity of decks (not in the current Aggro DH/CW meta maybe, but on average), but not feels as creative. Why? You're blame netdecking, but it was here forever. In my opinion the problem is that the meta is more and more handcrafted by devs, so you always have a clear direction where your deck should go from build-around cards even if you are building an off-meta deck from scratch. Quests, tribe decks, spell decks, all of them became limited by a couple of tech choices pretty quickly. Most of the people enjoy actual gameplay, not a deck building part, and don't want to waste 3-4 days to refine something homebrewed. Is it a bad thing? I think it's only a bad thing if you want to be a creative deckbuilder and insist that others for some reason should do the same to begin with. I would rather waste 3-4 hours to make 3-4 perfect builds of 3-4 top meta decks and play. For me it's a sport, not a creativity contest, so all I want is the highest winrate possible. If I want more fun and variety, I would still not invent more archetypes, I would make 15-18 best builds with every class represented and make a "competition" between them by playing normally and removing the worst performing decks after each round (did it several times, very interesting, but also very time-consuming). If I use an off-meta deck for a legend climb, I use it because I feel it's potentially the highest winrate choice for me. Holy paladin is almost off-meta deck by now, treated as a worse CW, and I climbed with a slightly tweaked build of it to the legend this month. Was it to express my creativity? No, it was because it beats DH and I felt comfortable enough in CW matchup, so it was the most suitable for the pocket meta I faced. If there were more Mech decks, I would just go DH. 8-2 run of your Unicorn Priest is not enough to say that the deck beats DH, Warrior, Hunter, Druid and all the mechs. Even if you actually found a hidden gem here and will get #1 legend with it, it will just become a meta deck very soon. You can't beat the hive mind as a part of it, you can only exploit it for a limited amount of time. TL;DR: Everyone does what they think is fun for them, if deckbuilding isn't a part of it, netdecking is a rational choice.
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English is not my native language, so, with a high probability, mistakes were made.
there is no shame in copying good ideas , and you cant blame people for "not reinventing the wheel every day". it that works, that works, period. no need for more brainstorm ^^
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"Woow..."
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Hey people, I decided to open my first thread ever in any HS forum because there is something that's bothering me quite a bit. Playing HS since its release and following the discussions here and in other forums from time to time I've seen the topic of the infamous "Boring Meta" where someone complains about x amount of decks being the best and if you want to be successful you absolutely have to play those an innumerable amount of times. And obviously Team5 is responsible for that because they have to be complete morons and don't know anything about balancing their game. To those guys I just wanted to say: You're wrong.
I have always been a (T)CG enthusiast and to me one integral part of these card games is experimenting and creating decks on your own. Yeah sure, you gotta get in the winning column eventually, atleast in my books, to get the motivation to play a deck for an extended time. But contrary to what seems to be popular belief, this does not require you to go to hsreplay, hearthpwn or whatever other site you get your meta information from and search out the one meta deck that doesn't make you hate yourself while playing it until legend. Instead I'd like to challenge people to get creative again, some good old "Trial and Error" picking a unique deck idea that they came up with on their own, try to refine it and eventually have success with it. That's how I get my drive to climb to legend every season since the release of Darkmoon Faire (came back from a year-long break).
Sure, not every deck will work. If your favorite card from an expansion is trash and there is no possible way to build around it to make it work outside of the occasional super mega highroll, that's unfortunate. But there is much more to Hearthstone than the 2-3 meta decks that get all the spotlight. Take Voyage to the Sunken City: DH, Control Warrior, Quest Hunter and some Mechs, that seems to be what the game consists of right now. And as per usual, people prefer to complain about those decks being too strong, draining the fun from the game instead of taking it as a motivation to beat those decks. The problem here is Net Decking.
Okay, I understand that if you don't have the time to do a lot of trying out and refining your own deck ideas, getting some help from the online herd intelligence is nice. Also if you are not the best player, feeling the need to pick out the one deck that seems to be the absolute strongest right now is understandable. But what if I told you that I made it to legend without those preselected decks, using my own ones and it is the most fun you can have. Beating those netdeckers with your own creation feels amazing!
Recently I have mostly been playing
Obviously I am not the only person that's trying to create cool and unique competitive decks - content creators like Kibler for example are highlighting new successful decks on a regular basis - but I am sure that if more people followed the same idea we would reach a point of variety that's unheard of.
What I’m trying to say is: it is not (entirely) Team5's fault that the game is what it is right now and that it seems to be stale and very restricting in deck building. It's the community that makes the game what it is right now and a main part of that is Net Decking and just "stealing" ideas, making it easy for yourself. There is a lot of untapped potential within the cards that are currently available and it should be our motivation to use that to make HS a game with even more variety than it already has. I would love to hear your ideas on this topic!
tl;dr: Net Decking is the reason for a stale and boring Meta. There are more than enough options to make new AND competitive decks right now and if more people took their time to figure out beating the Meta using unique strategies, we would have a much more interesting and evolving game.
devil advocate here but you need to take f2p into consideration. its easier to experiment when you have tons of cards or simply all cards. when you are limited then you tend to craft what s cheap and is battletested (netdeck) to give you maximum season card packs (ex: naga dh) and way to navigate in the meta if needed
i agree that given the amount of cards, there are still "unfound" viable decks (+1 for your wig priest). but hey we see new deck from time to time here on hpwn so why so negative ? :)
just a remark to bold my point: what is the dust cost of viable wig priest ? :)
"Woow..."
nice writeup! I also had amazing fun with homebrews, unfortunately they were never competitive so I was goofing around in casual and having a great time - right now it's a Naga Ignite Quest Mage where you try to OTK your opponent with Sanctum Chandler and Hot Streak :)
Still want to hit legend one day with a homebrew, so far the closest thing was a Galakrond Warlock that included Lorekeeper Polkelt and Animated Broomstick.
PS: I'd be happy to try out you Serpent Wig Priest deck!
First of all I just wanted to say that I didn't want to sound all too negative but I understand where that impression comes from haha
You're absolutely right, the available cards to oneself play a big role, so if you're a f2p player or returning from a long break you might need most of your dust to get A deck and cannot afford to try stuff out and that's absolutely fine. My intention was to reach out to those players that have the ressources to experiment with cards and maybe give them motivation for some DIY.
My Wig Priest costs about 5k dust. I'll post a decklist below
I appreciate everyone who is trying out new stuff! Interesting that you played around with Sanctum Chandler, I also tried to make it work with Ignite and all the other cheap spells but so far only limited success unfortunately. Might try again next season :)
You can find my decklist for the Serpent Wig Priest here:
https://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/1409759-serpent-wig-priest
standard with Ignite and Sanctum Chandler ? try this
probably can be improved though and you should add Magus
"Woow..."
I think it's wrong to see netdecking as a problem. Lots of people don't have a ton of cards and want to invest their dust wisely, lots of people don't enjoy experimenting and theorycrafting, and lots of people quite frankly are not good players and hence have to rely on a familiar powerful deck to climb.
Instead of viewing netdecking as a problem, see it as an opportunity. The more predictable the meta, the easier it is to counter with homebrew. If everyone just played random stuff there would be no room for tech cards and it wouldn't be possible for certain decks to thrive that are built specifically to beat a predictable meta.
That said, balance can be a problem, specifically when decks are both strong and lack easily exploitable weaknesses. I feel like pre-nerf Druid was such a deck, since it was nigh unbeatable unless you played aggro, creating a very narrow meta that is hostile to experimentation. DH on the other hand isn't that bad, aside from an on-curve Drek'thar there is nothing unbeatable about that deck, there are plenty of ways to either out-tempo or out-heal your way to victory.
I would like to simply say to you: You're wrong.
There is no doubt that the HS team, in the past, was very creative and they created a very cool game. This time is ended. HS is losing interest for years now and the only real innovative past thing was BG.
I don't know until when it will be played, and I am not saying that it is dying, but for sure it is going very bad and in a scary direction. The main reason in my opinion is exactly the opposite of what you wrote and therefore: Team 5 is not creative at all like now.
The biggest mistake that they are doing is that they keep printing cards without a real direction. This game will not become funnier with more cards that are more or less the same, or past reprints. This game is out since 2014, and now, it is time for big changes in the whole structure of the game, otherwise, the interest in this game will always be more and more asymptotic at 0, until one day it will be 0.
It is time for big changes. I only hope that it is not already too late.
But the fact is most people will just play the best / most popular decks in ranked and as there is ONLY ranked...
Hearthstone really could use a mode where you face non meta decks. Maybe based on a deck rating based on card value paired with a deck rating from your opponent.
And i keep repeating myself, but Heartstone really could use more game modes like MtG's pauper and peasant or have a mode with like 3 blocks which change every other month (i believe they already suggested something like this?).
So, regarding also the Team 5's work. The conclusion based on the charts above for me is obvious. People are interested overall in card games, therefore there is demand. HS is the only card game that is going with this terrible trend. So, Team 5 's work is terrible. They are not able to meet people's expectations and what they want.
They started with an amazing idea (which initially broke the market) and they seem not able to keep it alive with good standards.
Hearthstone is still the top on your charts for a digital only card game. How many searches for MTG or Yu Gi Oh are for prerelease locations, card values, draft guides, pack contents, fnm locations or rewards…. Of course the searches are biased toward physical games. Your argument for no new ideas is the same one MTG has had for years, everything is kicker… or horsemanship. Sure there has been quite a bit of pack filler and duds but it’s not nearly as bad as you make it out. I think they need to learn from their design mistakes and settle the rift between design and marketing, but HS has a decent community and has been doing pretty good. I agree with you 100% on mercenaries though, that traded good will and player interest for money.
not to mention HS is based on warcraft universe and lore. which is quite appealing, to say the least
"Woow..."
Having a meta game where 95% of players are net decking AND getting a clue by seeing your opponents class before the mulligan every game makes it relatively easy to predict what style of deck your opponent is going to play. Especially as there usually is only one (max. two) deck per class that is considered to be competitive. And that makes it quite boring in my eyes. I wouldn't mind it at all if "everyone just played random stuff" because that would make the game a much more interesting experience. And the choices you make during mulligan have to be made with much more scenarios in mind and become really important.
Besides that, let's be real: tech cards do not play that big of a role already. Weapon removal is used by some decks but even Smothering Starfish plays such a minor role in the meta even though a neutral board-wide silence looks absolutely busted on paper. I even think they might play a bigger role with a wider variety of used decks because there's a bigger chance that some "random" weapon strategy, deathrattle synergy or big buffed minions might catch you off guard...
I agree that a shrinking player base indicates that something is wrong with game. And it obviously is, otherwise I wouldn't have started this discussion. But I still think that even though we as the players depend on the developers to provide us with exciting content that we can build upon, it's the community that decides the fate of a game. Yes, Team5 looks to be slow when it comes to necessary balance changes. Yes, recent "innovations" like mercenaries failed to revive the game as a whole. But as others already mentioned, in terms of a digital-only card game, HS is still the market leader.
Legends of Runeterra is comparable to HS as the game that it is based on is atleast as big as WOW and even though it is much younger, it never even came close to the size of HS. Another point someone else mentioned is that a lot of the attention other big TCGs like Magic and Yu-Gi-Oh receive comes from the actual TRADING part of those games that HS simply doesn't have as well as from all the offline action. And now that I think about it, there probably lies one of the main problems: there is no official tournament scene for your average, non-professional HS player.
A major part of the constant interest in Magic and Yu-Gi-Oh lies in locals, regionals and major events where everyone can chase their childhood dream of becoming a successful duelist by winning a big tournament out of nothing. I guess for a digital card it is close to impossible to set such tournaments up on a regular basis with professional standards but if there was something like that I am sure it would boost the interest in HS quite a bit.
you have good points there. disabling Fireside gatherings didn't help. still surprised that such a game got no chat during standard play. cant talk to your stranger opponent ? ok :/ wtf? people are now even pushing for auto squelsh and bots ... also HS is purely solo game. 1v1 at max, no team, nothing. even chess has team gamemodes lol. missing the whole point of games in general :D
having little and poor "roots in reality", purely virtual, might be def a downside for HS yep, agreed. There are other warcraft realworld TCG to the rescue.
"Woow..."
If not for experimentation and deck building I would have left the game years ago, because there aren't that many of us out there, especially in better ranks, it's hard to have fun alone sometimes. I almost hate it when they release new mechanics that greatly improve old decks, because I always have reasons to try something else in Wild. Possibilities never end no matter the class. Dredge for example, and sir finley to an extent, vastly improved decks that heavily rely on draw order to simply function, like dragon rogue. And every new card makes you want to slightly alter your deck to better fit said new cards so you end up play testing with even more cards.
I hardly ever play more than 3 games in a row without altering my deck or playing another one. Still climbing.
Yes. HS is still the most played card game online. Anyway, if we take a closer look at what is played, it is quite clear that BG is the leader. So, the interest in HS is decreasing, BG is what keeps HS up. Again, we can argue that Team 5's work is not that good.
Therefore, without BG, I am not sure if HS is still the most played online card game. My guess is no. If we remove BG which is nearby alone half of HS's share (if not more), HS would be below Runeterra and Magic or at least, all 3 would be close by.
However, what is certainly true is that HS is no longer the undisputed leader of years ago. And that's a good thing, competition increases quality. But also a bad thing, because it can no longer lose all the ground it has lost in the past (otherwise the risk is to go out of the market).
So, my opinion is the same. It is time for big changes, this game will get boring. Interaction with the surroundings, graveyard, interactions in the opponent's turn, pieces of equipment, a lot of things can be done, imagination is the only limit. If Team 5 will sleep, then it may be late.
Hearthstone doing a good job (well, better than 7 years ago) in terms of diversity of decks (not in the current Aggro DH/CW meta maybe, but on average), but not feels as creative. Why? You're blame netdecking, but it was here forever. In my opinion the problem is that the meta is more and more handcrafted by devs, so you always have a clear direction where your deck should go from build-around cards even if you are building an off-meta deck from scratch. Quests, tribe decks, spell decks, all of them became limited by a couple of tech choices pretty quickly.
Most of the people enjoy actual gameplay, not a deck building part, and don't want to waste 3-4 days to refine something homebrewed. Is it a bad thing? I think it's only a bad thing if you want to be a creative deckbuilder and insist that others for some reason should do the same to begin with. I would rather waste 3-4 hours to make 3-4 perfect builds of 3-4 top meta decks and play. For me it's a sport, not a creativity contest, so all I want is the highest winrate possible. If I want more fun and variety, I would still not invent more archetypes, I would make 15-18 best builds with every class represented and make a "competition" between them by playing normally and removing the worst performing decks after each round (did it several times, very interesting, but also very time-consuming).
If I use an off-meta deck for a legend climb, I use it because I feel it's potentially the highest winrate choice for me. Holy paladin is almost off-meta deck by now, treated as a worse CW, and I climbed with a slightly tweaked build of it to the legend this month. Was it to express my creativity? No, it was because it beats DH and I felt comfortable enough in CW matchup, so it was the most suitable for the pocket meta I faced. If there were more Mech decks, I would just go DH.
8-2 run of your Unicorn Priest is not enough to say that the deck beats DH, Warrior, Hunter, Druid and all the mechs. Even if you actually found a hidden gem here and will get #1 legend with it, it will just become a meta deck very soon. You can't beat the hive mind as a part of it, you can only exploit it for a limited amount of time.
TL;DR: Everyone does what they think is fun for them, if deckbuilding isn't a part of it, netdecking is a rational choice.
English is not my native language, so, with a high probability, mistakes were made.
very good sentence about hive mind :)
there is no shame in copying good ideas , and you cant blame people for "not reinventing the wheel every day". it that works, that works, period. no need for more brainstorm ^^
"Woow..."