Magic: The Gathering is, inarguably, the largest trading card game in the world. It has the largest playerbase. It has the most fervent fanbase. It has the largest competitive base. It is the oldest ongoing card game in the world. Collectible card games cannot be discussed without Magic being in that conversation.
Magic: The Gathering is over 20 years old. There are 12,000+ unique cards in its ecosphere (though only a little over 1100 are available for standard competitive play at any given time). Magic is simply the standard by which all other card games are judged.
Hearthstone, by comparison, is less than a year old (not including beta) and has a total of 412 cards that players can use. It's a mere infant compared to old grandfather Magic.
Even though the two games are very different, even while having surface-level similarities, animosity between their fervent fanbases will be inevitable. Unnecessary, yet inevitable. Hearthstone fans defend their game on the basis of what it can become. Magic fans defend their game on what it has become. There's a sense of superiority among Magic fans, simply because their game has stood the test of time, continues in its popularity twenty-odd years from its beginnings. Then there's the sense of inadequacy in the pleas of Hearthstone fans that their game can be as great as Magic, given time.
I'm definitely more of a Hearthstone fan than I am a Magic fan, but there is a lot of wishful thinking in the fan argument that Hearthstone can be a better game than Magic. I'm not saying it can't be and won't be a game comparable to Magic, but at this point in time there is no argument. Hearthstone is simply too young to challenge Magic in terms of breadth and depth of gameplay. That said, Hearthstone certainly has the promise of depth and breadth in the future, but those arguments are currently built upon the shaky premise that Blizzard doesn't fuck it's own game up at some point down the road.
Into the Hearthstone scene step Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa and Brian Kibler, both Magic: The Gathering Hall of Fame players. Both with impressive Pro Tour and Grand Prix results. Both highly respected in the Magic community itself. When Magic players of this caliber start playing Hearthstone, it becomes a high profile moment for the game. Moreso when those players are not only playing the game, but arguing for its strengths and contributing back to it.
Brian Kibler has written several highly read and respected Hearthstone articles on his BMKGamingwebsite. Paulo Vitor has written similarly impressive articles at IHearthU and ChannelFireball. Brian has further contributed his Undertaker Priest deck to the meta (pre-Hunter nerf) and really highlighted the strength of the Undertaker card across the board. Paulo commentated VGVN #3, offering his own insights and card game expertise to the Hearthstone tournament scene. Kibler's accolades go further, having been the lead designer of the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game, and the current senior designer of SolForge, a digital collectible card game.
So when established Magic: The Gathering players start playing Hearthstone, start lauding the appeal and play of the game, when those players start contributing in substantial ways to the community itself, Hearthstone fans see it as a validation of Hearthstone. They feel it cements Hearthstone into the card gamesphere. In a way it decreases some of the unhealthy "us vs. them" animosity, because some of "them" is now part of the "us". Fans begin to feel that their investment with Hearthstone, a game with a promising but uncertain future, has been legitimized when big-name Magic players become contributing members of their community.
Of course, any animosity between Hearthstone and Magic fans is silly, at best. The two games are different enough, and played on mostly different platforms, that they can co-exist with each other quite comfortably. If anything, Brian Kibler and Paulo Vitor prove this. Both play Hearthstone. Both stream Hearthstone. But neither have departed from Magic. They both continue to split their time between Magic: The Gathering and Hearthstone. It remains to be seen how long they'll remain with Hearthstone, but every indication is for a long time to come. Their presence in the Hearthstone community has only been a boon to the continued growth of the game.
You can find Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa on Twitter and Twitch.
In my opinion, which doesn't really count for much, hearthstone will never be as good a game as magic. hearthstone, on a fundamental level, is less complex as magic, and while this isn't necessarily a bad thing, and surely doesn't make it a game that takes no skill to succeed at, magic will pretty much always have a higher skill cap than hearthstone. add to that, wizards has far more experience and will always have more experience than blizzard at balancing their game. While blizzard has the added advantage of being able to nerf and buff cards as blizzard likes, something that wizards cannot do, their reluctance of doing so, extremity of it when it is done if the buzzard is anything to go by, and the lack of any buffs to cards universally considered terrible since official release worries me. The fact that we do get changes to cards that need changing is promising, but in hindsight, these cards shouldn't need such insane changes in the first place.
In my opinion, which doesn't really count for much, hearthstone will never be as good a game as magic. hearthstone, on a fundamental level, is less complex as magic, and while this isn't necessarily a bad thing, and surely doesn't make it a game that takes no skill to succeed at, magic will pretty much always have a higher skill cap than hearthstone. add to that, wizards has far more experience and will always have more experience than blizzard at balancing their game. While blizzard has the added advantage of being able to nerf and buff cards as blizzard likes, something that wizards cannot do, their reluctance of doing so, extremity of it when it is done if the buzzard is anything to go by, and the lack of any buffs to cards universally considered terrible since official release worries me. The fact that we do get changes to cards that need changing is promising, but in hindsight, these cards shouldn't need such insane changes in the first place.
I believe the opposite is going to be the case. Over time Hearthstone going to have a bigger skill level than MtG, simply because you going to be able to use more cards competitively. Magic has over 12k cards, but around 1100 are used for competitive play. Hearthstone going to have in a few years a much bigger amount than that. I doubt that cards going to be excluded. It makes a difference if you create your decks out of 1100 or out of 3000 cards. This road requieres checking the balance and nerfing cards. Blizzard is doing it correct. By buffing a card you can make a lot more wrong than in nerfing a card. You can predict easier the consequences out of a nerf than out of a buff. Of course there are some cards which i would like to see stronger, simply because of the role them play in the lore. Best example is Illidan. But i do understand the problems with buffs and i am fine with it.
While it is true that it will be possible and likely that hearthstone will have more active cards (eventually) at a time, my point still stands; on a fundamental level, hearthstone is less complex than magic. A bigger memorization cap, sure; A bigger skill cap? I doubt it. Besides, that's just talking about standard play; in most other formats, you can use any card in the game.
For now, nerfing is fine, I guess. but whats the point of having 400+ cards in the game if only half of them are used? buffs need to happen at some point. they don't need to be direct buffs, but i'd rather have an achievement be "400+ cards competitively viable' than "800+ cards, but you can only really use 200 of them." By buffing a card, you can get more community backlash than nerfing a card, yes. But is it correct to never buff cards that obviously need it, and only nerf when the meta has been totally overrun with the card that needs nerfing, rather than bringing it to a reasonable level beforehand? I don't think it is.
Nerfing is generally less dangerous than buffing. With a nerf, you can reasonably predict the immediate effects on the metagame. With a buff it is harder to predict. And with a buff, you run the danger of so unsettling the metagame that you may need to nerf the card you just buffed, which makes the designers look like they have no clue what they are doing.
I think there's a lot more reticence to buffing than nerfing among designers of every ilk in gaming. It's easier and less dangerous to the overall health of the game.
Plus, cards that seem useless now may in fact become useful given the addition of other cards in the future.
Bear in mind too, that cards not used often in constructed are valued quite highly in arena. Hearthstone is two games in one, in a sense.
All very true. However, once blizz gets a better grasp as how to balance the game, I very much hope that cards that are worthless in both formats will get a buff, and as I said before, it doesn't need to be a direct one.
While it is true that it will be possible and likely that hearthstone will have more active cards (eventually) at a time, my point still stands; on a fundamental level, hearthstone is less complex than magic. A bigger memorization cap, sure; A bigger skill cap? I doubt it. Besides, that's just talking about standard play; in most other formats, you can use any card in the game.
You need to consider that Magic is 20 years old, Hearthstone not even a year. You are completely correct, that Magic requires right now probably more skill than Hearthstone, but over the years the gap is going to be smaller and smaller. That is what i believe.
Not without fundamentally changing the game. if you are counting simply more cards, then hearthstone will eventually have a higher skill cap than magic in standard, but in all other formats, magic will always be top.
Wizards recently boasted that MTG is estimated to have 12 million active players worldwide. Hearthstone has 20 million accounts. Granted, most of those are inactive, but that's not shabby considering it has only been around a year compared to MTG.
Pros write articles for monetary incentives, whether hits from subs or advertisers. The main reason some of them are looking at Hearthstone is because the playerbase is enormous. It doesn't matter if the game will ever be as "skillful" as Magic or not to them, it just matters that they can apply their existing skillbase to it and get money/fame from the masses of hearthstoners that tune into them.
The biggest problem I see with the longevity of hearthstone is that blizzard seems reluctant to add new mechanics into the game. Naxx didn't add anything new and they already stated that the next card expansion wont introduce new mechanics either. Without new interactions between the card pool, the game will become stale very quickly for a lot of players.
Wizards recently boasted that MTG is estimated to have 12 million active players worldwide. Hearthstone has 20 million accounts. Granted, most of those are inactive, but that's not shabby considering it has only been around a year compared to MTG.
I also wonder how many truly active players Hearthstone has. Based upon Blizzard's own numbers that 0.5% people make legend each season, and that there are only ~5000 legends at the end of each month, I'm going to guesstimate that there are between 3 - 6 million truly active players around the world (not including China).
The main reason some of them are looking at Hearthstone is because the playerbase is enormous. It doesn't matter if the game will ever be as "skillful" as Magic or not to them, it just matters that they can apply their existing skillbase to it and get money/fame from the masses of hearthstoners that tune into them.
That's super cynical. One hopes that they wouldn't continue if they weren't also enjoying the game. Judging from their articles and streams, they are enjoying Hearthstone. I imagine it would be hard to fake real enjoyment for very long.
Granted, they might have been attracted to the Hearthstone scene because of the huge popularity and buzz, but I'd like to think they're staying because they're finding the game challenging and fun.
The biggest problem I see with the longevity of hearthstone is that blizzard seems reluctant to add new mechanics into the game. Naxx didn't add anything new and they already stated that the next card expansion wont introduce new mechanics either. Without new interactions between the card pool, the game will become stale very quickly for a lot of players.
I think in 2015 we will start to see some new keywords and interactions. (Or after the first 100 card expansion, which I'm assuming comes out late 2014.)
Blizzard is being careful about how quickly they rush into more complexity.
The biggest problem I see with the longevity of hearthstone is that blizzard seems reluctant to add new mechanics into the game. Naxx didn't add anything new and they already stated that the next card expansion wont introduce new mechanics either. Without new interactions between the card pool, the game will become stale very quickly for a lot of players.
I do not think that is a fair assessment. Hearthstone has been barely out for 6-7 months, and has had exactly 1 mini-adventure so far, which is explicitly explained that it is not an expansion.
When there is room for design space to further explore existing mechanics, it should be done before adding new mechanics. Looking at Magic and its 120 keywords (I don't know exactly how many, but its over 100), any new players will be moderately intimidated, I don't think I would ever want to see Hearthstone go down that path. If Magic launched with some 20 keywords initially, that is 5 new keywords introduced every year over these 20 years. New keywords get players excited and go out and buy the expansion, so part of it has to do with marketing as well, but what turns me off is the release of new cards every 3 months, it is simply too fast for casual players who might only play the game once a week (you need to allocate a significant amount of time for a gaming night with friends).
The biggest problem I see with the longevity of hearthstone is that blizzard seems reluctant to add new mechanics into the game. Naxx didn't add anything new and they already stated that the next card expansion wont introduce new mechanics either. Without new interactions between the card pool, the game will become stale very quickly for a lot of players.
I do not think that is a fair assessment. Hearthstone has been barely out for 6-7 months, and has had exactly 1 mini-adventure so far, which is explicitly explained that it is not an expansion.
When there is room for design space to further explore existing mechanics, it should be done before adding new mechanics. Looking at Magic and its 120 keywords (I don't know exactly how many, but its over 100), any new players will be moderately intimidated, I don't think I would ever want to see Hearthstone go down that path. If Magic launched with some 20 keywords initially, that is 5 new keywords introduced every year over these 20 years. New keywords get players excited and go out and buy the expansion, so part of it has to do with marketing as well, but what turns me off is the release of new cards every 3 months, it is simply too fast for casual players who might only play the game once a week (you need to allocate a significant amount of time for a gaming night with friends).
The keyword complexity argument is only relevant if you're talking about formats other than Standard / Type 2, which most new players probably wouldn't consider playing anyway due to the high barriers to entry in cost (have fun buying Power 9, or even mana bases for Modern with lands being upwards of $20 per), sourcing cards (secondary markets for things that aren't standard are nowhere near as easy) and player accessibility (Standard is far and away the most widely played constructed format, meaning you'll always have a higher chance of finding players).
Reasons why Magic is not suited to online adaptation include :
The inclusion of instant-speed abilities slows the game down horribly and requires that players are constantly clicking to pass priority back to their opponent.
Similarly, having the opponent choose blocks involves the passing of priority (this is more acceptable IMHO).
Tournament structures are such that players need to set aside several uninterruptable hours for play.
Card complexity in Magic means that a very significant amount of coding and beta testing is necessary to implement each new set (4 sets per year).
Personally, while these points are all valid, they could largely be mitigated by better interface design and either better policies with getting developers early access to cards or theoretically better developers.
I think the biggest point you're missing about why MTGO eats shit is tix. Honestly, if all you had to pay for was product in order to draft, I would never play Hearthstone again.
One key area where Hearthstone loses complexity when compared to Magic is in the use of character classes instead of different colours. Magic's greatest strength, and its greatest weakness, is the colour system. The 5 colours and the land bases required to power a deck result in incredibly skilful deck construction. Hearthstone can not hope to recreate this level of depth and, wisely IMHO, has not attempted to.
Indeed, the colour mechanic of Magic is also the game's key failing. The more colours you include in your deck the more access you have to powerful cards and complementary strategies. However, you also dramatically increase your chances of drawing an unworkable opening hand or, alternatively, starting well and then randomly drawing consecutive land cards until you are overwhelmed. Around a quarter of Magic games are decided by mana screw, colour screw or mana flood. Experienced players learn to accept this fact but, on the face of it, this is totally unacceptable in any game. There is a massive trade off between the strategic depth which the colour mechanism offers and the void, frustrating games which it regularly produces.
Screw and flood are annoying, but they are arguably why the game has endured for so long. While they exist only as the bi-product of the game's core mechanic, they are an inbuilt balance mechanic that allow worse players to beat better players (a requirement for a lot of low tier players to maintain interest) in a percentage of games without Wizards ever having to address it directly by either creating ridiculous comeback cards / mechanics (Yugioh) or by building large amounts of randomness into the system (Hearthstone).
To be clear, this isn't me saying that screw and flood were intentionally designed (they might have been but I don't have any evidence of that, much less even believe it), but given the amount of time that has gone past Wizards has had ample time to deal with the problem and they haven't REALLY bothered (fixers exist, but they could do a lot better), to me that says something.
Lastly on this point, I think you're overstating the amount of games that screw and flood directly determines the outcome of as I don't think it's anywhere near 25%
Wizards recently boasted that MTG is estimated to have 12 million active players worldwide. Hearthstone has 20 million accounts. Granted, most of those are inactive, but that's not shabby considering it has only been around a year compared to MTG.
I also wonder how many truly active players Hearthstone has. Based upon Blizzard's own numbers that 0.5% people make legend each season, and that there are only ~5000 legends at the end of each month, I'm going to guesstimate that there are between 3 - 6 million truly active players around the world (not including China).
The main reason some of them are looking at Hearthstone is because the playerbase is enormous. It doesn't matter if the game will ever be as "skillful" as Magic or not to them, it just matters that they can apply their existing skillbase to it and get money/fame from the masses of hearthstoners that tune into them.
That's super cynical. One hopes that they wouldn't continue if they weren't also enjoying the game. Judging from their articles and streams, they are enjoying Hearthstone. I imagine it would be hard to fake real enjoyment for very long.
Granted, they might have been attracted to the Hearthstone scene because of the huge popularity and buzz, but I'd like to think they're staying because they're finding the game challenging and fun.
Fox isn't cynical, he's absolutely correct and you are being naive. There are a shit tonne of Magic pros who are downright mercenaries. They're coming because e-sports is hot, Hearthstone is on the rise and basically all of their skills are transferable.
Why do you think piles of Magic players end up playing Poker? Do you really think it's because it's the most fun game around?
D.S
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Hearthstone, by comparison, is less than a year old (not including beta) and has a total of 412 cards that players can use. It's a mere infant compared to old grandfather Magic.
Even though the two games are very different, even while having surface-level similarities, animosity between their fervent fanbases will be inevitable. Unnecessary, yet inevitable. Hearthstone fans defend their game on the basis of what it can become. Magic fans defend their game on what it has become. There's a sense of superiority among Magic fans, simply because their game has stood the test of time, continues in its popularity twenty-odd years from its beginnings. Then there's the sense of inadequacy in the pleas of Hearthstone fans that their game can be as great as Magic, given time.
I'm definitely more of a Hearthstone fan than I am a Magic fan, but there is a lot of wishful thinking in the fan argument that Hearthstone can be a better game than Magic. I'm not saying it can't be and won't be a game comparable to Magic, but at this point in time there is no argument. Hearthstone is simply too young to challenge Magic in terms of breadth and depth of gameplay. That said, Hearthstone certainly has the promise of depth and breadth in the future, but those arguments are currently built upon the shaky premise that Blizzard doesn't fuck it's own game up at some point down the road.
Into the Hearthstone scene step Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa and Brian Kibler, both Magic: The Gathering Hall of Fame players. Both with impressive Pro Tour and Grand Prix results. Both highly respected in the Magic community itself. When Magic players of this caliber start playing Hearthstone, it becomes a high profile moment for the game. Moreso when those players are not only playing the game, but arguing for its strengths and contributing back to it.
Brian Kibler has written several highly read and respected Hearthstone articles on his BMKGamingwebsite. Paulo Vitor has written similarly impressive articles at IHearthU and ChannelFireball. Brian has further contributed his Undertaker Priest deck to the meta (pre-Hunter nerf) and really highlighted the strength of the Undertaker card across the board. Paulo commentated VGVN #3, offering his own insights and card game expertise to the Hearthstone tournament scene. Kibler's accolades go further, having been the lead designer of the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game, and the current senior designer of SolForge, a digital collectible card game.
So when established Magic: The Gathering players start playing Hearthstone, start lauding the appeal and play of the game, when those players start contributing in substantial ways to the community itself, Hearthstone fans see it as a validation of Hearthstone. They feel it cements Hearthstone into the card gamesphere. In a way it decreases some of the unhealthy "us vs. them" animosity, because some of "them" is now part of the "us". Fans begin to feel that their investment with Hearthstone, a game with a promising but uncertain future, has been legitimized when big-name Magic players become contributing members of their community.
Of course, any animosity between Hearthstone and Magic fans is silly, at best. The two games are different enough, and played on mostly different platforms, that they can co-exist with each other quite comfortably. If anything, Brian Kibler and Paulo Vitor prove this. Both play Hearthstone. Both stream Hearthstone. But neither have departed from Magic. They both continue to split their time between Magic: The Gathering and Hearthstone. It remains to be seen how long they'll remain with Hearthstone, but every indication is for a long time to come. Their presence in the Hearthstone community has only been a boon to the continued growth of the game.
You can find Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa on Twitter and Twitch.
You can find Brian Kibler on Twitter and Twitch.
(original article: http://hearthpoe.blogspot.ca/2014/09/why-do-we-get-excited-when-kiblers-and.html)
Poetic.
I would pay real money to see Kiblers vs PVDDR.
Can someone make it happen, please?
I wouldn't be surprised if Hearthstone had more players than MtG now, honestly.
http://www.twitch.tv/szsoulzek
In my opinion, which doesn't really count for much, hearthstone will never be as good a game as magic. hearthstone, on a fundamental level, is less complex as magic, and while this isn't necessarily a bad thing, and surely doesn't make it a game that takes no skill to succeed at, magic will pretty much always have a higher skill cap than hearthstone. add to that, wizards has far more experience and will always have more experience than blizzard at balancing their game. While blizzard has the added advantage of being able to nerf and buff cards as blizzard likes, something that wizards cannot do, their reluctance of doing so, extremity of it when it is done if the buzzard is anything to go by, and the lack of any buffs to cards universally considered terrible since official release worries me. The fact that we do get changes to cards that need changing is promising, but in hindsight, these cards shouldn't need such insane changes in the first place.
I believe the opposite is going to be the case. Over time Hearthstone going to have a bigger skill level than MtG, simply because you going to be able to use more cards competitively. Magic has over 12k cards, but around 1100 are used for competitive play. Hearthstone going to have in a few years a much bigger amount than that. I doubt that cards going to be excluded. It makes a difference if you create your decks out of 1100 or out of 3000 cards. This road requieres checking the balance and nerfing cards. Blizzard is doing it correct. By buffing a card you can make a lot more wrong than in nerfing a card. You can predict easier the consequences out of a nerf than out of a buff. Of course there are some cards which i would like to see stronger, simply because of the role them play in the lore. Best example is Illidan. But i do understand the problems with buffs and i am fine with it.
While it is true that it will be possible and likely that hearthstone will have more active cards (eventually) at a time, my point still stands; on a fundamental level, hearthstone is less complex than magic. A bigger memorization cap, sure; A bigger skill cap? I doubt it. Besides, that's just talking about standard play; in most other formats, you can use any card in the game.
For now, nerfing is fine, I guess. but whats the point of having 400+ cards in the game if only half of them are used? buffs need to happen at some point. they don't need to be direct buffs, but i'd rather have an achievement be "400+ cards competitively viable' than "800+ cards, but you can only really use 200 of them." By buffing a card, you can get more community backlash than nerfing a card, yes. But is it correct to never buff cards that obviously need it, and only nerf when the meta has been totally overrun with the card that needs nerfing, rather than bringing it to a reasonable level beforehand? I don't think it is.
Nerfing is generally less dangerous than buffing. With a nerf, you can reasonably predict the immediate effects on the metagame. With a buff it is harder to predict. And with a buff, you run the danger of so unsettling the metagame that you may need to nerf the card you just buffed, which makes the designers look like they have no clue what they are doing.
I think there's a lot more reticence to buffing than nerfing among designers of every ilk in gaming. It's easier and less dangerous to the overall health of the game.
Plus, cards that seem useless now may in fact become useful given the addition of other cards in the future.
Bear in mind too, that cards not used often in constructed are valued quite highly in arena. Hearthstone is two games in one, in a sense.
Poetic.
All very true. However, once blizz gets a better grasp as how to balance the game, I very much hope that cards that are worthless in both formats will get a buff, and as I said before, it doesn't need to be a direct one.
You need to consider that Magic is 20 years old, Hearthstone not even a year. You are completely correct, that Magic requires right now probably more skill than Hearthstone, but over the years the gap is going to be smaller and smaller. That is what i believe.
Not without fundamentally changing the game. if you are counting simply more cards, then hearthstone will eventually have a higher skill cap than magic in standard, but in all other formats, magic will always be top.
Excellent post, Mr. Clawbeast. Thanks for taking the time to write out so many well-thought words.
Poetic.
Wizards recently boasted that MTG is estimated to have 12 million active players worldwide. Hearthstone has 20 million accounts. Granted, most of those are inactive, but that's not shabby considering it has only been around a year compared to MTG.
Pros write articles for monetary incentives, whether hits from subs or advertisers. The main reason some of them are looking at Hearthstone is because the playerbase is enormous. It doesn't matter if the game will ever be as "skillful" as Magic or not to them, it just matters that they can apply their existing skillbase to it and get money/fame from the masses of hearthstoners that tune into them.
The biggest problem I see with the longevity of hearthstone is that blizzard seems reluctant to add new mechanics into the game. Naxx didn't add anything new and they already stated that the next card expansion wont introduce new mechanics either. Without new interactions between the card pool, the game will become stale very quickly for a lot of players.
I also wonder how many truly active players Hearthstone has. Based upon Blizzard's own numbers that 0.5% people make legend each season, and that there are only ~5000 legends at the end of each month, I'm going to guesstimate that there are between 3 - 6 million truly active players around the world (not including China).
That's super cynical. One hopes that they wouldn't continue if they weren't also enjoying the game. Judging from their articles and streams, they are enjoying Hearthstone. I imagine it would be hard to fake real enjoyment for very long.
Granted, they might have been attracted to the Hearthstone scene because of the huge popularity and buzz, but I'd like to think they're staying because they're finding the game challenging and fun.
Poetic.
I think in 2015 we will start to see some new keywords and interactions. (Or after the first 100 card expansion, which I'm assuming comes out late 2014.)
Blizzard is being careful about how quickly they rush into more complexity.
Poetic.
I do not think that is a fair assessment. Hearthstone has been barely out for 6-7 months, and has had exactly 1 mini-adventure so far, which is explicitly explained that it is not an expansion.
When there is room for design space to further explore existing mechanics, it should be done before adding new mechanics. Looking at Magic and its 120 keywords (I don't know exactly how many, but its over 100), any new players will be moderately intimidated, I don't think I would ever want to see Hearthstone go down that path. If Magic launched with some 20 keywords initially, that is 5 new keywords introduced every year over these 20 years. New keywords get players excited and go out and buy the expansion, so part of it has to do with marketing as well, but what turns me off is the release of new cards every 3 months, it is simply too fast for casual players who might only play the game once a week (you need to allocate a significant amount of time for a gaming night with friends).
The keyword complexity argument is only relevant if you're talking about formats other than Standard / Type 2, which most new players probably wouldn't consider playing anyway due to the high barriers to entry in cost (have fun buying Power 9, or even mana bases for Modern with lands being upwards of $20 per), sourcing cards (secondary markets for things that aren't standard are nowhere near as easy) and player accessibility (Standard is far and away the most widely played constructed format, meaning you'll always have a higher chance of finding players).
Personally, while these points are all valid, they could largely be mitigated by better interface design and either better policies with getting developers early access to cards or theoretically better developers.
I think the biggest point you're missing about why MTGO eats shit is tix. Honestly, if all you had to pay for was product in order to draft, I would never play Hearthstone again.
Screw and flood are annoying, but they are arguably why the game has endured for so long. While they exist only as the bi-product of the game's core mechanic, they are an inbuilt balance mechanic that allow worse players to beat better players (a requirement for a lot of low tier players to maintain interest) in a percentage of games without Wizards ever having to address it directly by either creating ridiculous comeback cards / mechanics (Yugioh) or by building large amounts of randomness into the system (Hearthstone).
To be clear, this isn't me saying that screw and flood were intentionally designed (they might have been but I don't have any evidence of that, much less even believe it), but given the amount of time that has gone past Wizards has had ample time to deal with the problem and they haven't REALLY bothered (fixers exist, but they could do a lot better), to me that says something.
Lastly on this point, I think you're overstating the amount of games that screw and flood directly determines the outcome of as I don't think it's anywhere near 25%
D.S
Fox isn't cynical, he's absolutely correct and you are being naive. There are a shit tonne of Magic pros who are downright mercenaries. They're coming because e-sports is hot, Hearthstone is on the rise and basically all of their skills are transferable.
Why do you think piles of Magic players end up playing Poker? Do you really think it's because it's the most fun game around?
D.S