I was an avid Hearthstone player for almost two years. I've dropped it and taken up Faeria instead. I want to share why with other Hearthstone players because I've found Faeria to be an incredibly fulfilling and rewarding experience.
I was a passionate free-to-play Hearthstone player. I played enough to collect more than half of the legendaries when Un'goro came out, making it to a full 12 wins in arena about a dozen times. After a while, it felt like I was playing more to get cards than to actually have fun.
The unpleasant thing about free-to-play games is that to remain free-to-play they have to build in hooks to keep you coming back, to keep you wanting to play continually until you pay. Paying for a book is something I can do once and not worry about getting continued value out of it later. I can pick it up to re-read if I want it, but I don't have to return to it regularly or else miss out. But playing a free-to-play game without paying for it means that you have to engage with it continually if you want to have enough in-game resources to be competitive. I did that for Hearthstone until I felt drained.
And paying for Hearthstone didn't seem reasonable to me. For $50 at an expansion launch, I could have gotten about as many cards as I would get in two weeks of playing arena, and that would likely only include a couple of legendaries, nowhere near a full set.
I pay to play Faeria. And I enjoy myself a lot more.
With Faeria, you pay $25 to get the full set of cards. So that you can really enjoy the full flavor of building a collection, this still happens through earning in-game experience, but the pace is so different as to make Hearthstone collection-building laughable. I had my full Faeria collection within about 70 hours of starting, and they've recently doubled the experience rewards, so that new players can probably get a full collection within about 35 hours. I like this structure because it helped me to discover each card in turn rather than suddenly having about 400 different cards thrown in my face. It was enough time to discover the flavor of each without being so slow as to feel like I'm playing just to get the cards. To keep things lively they're releasing new expansions every two months, with half the expansion coming out each month. The expansions cost $14 each.
The ladder structure for Faeria is better too. Instead of dropping almost to the bottom of the ladder when it resets each month, you just drop to the bottom of the current level band you're in. That makes leveling back up faster, and also ensures that you're matched up to people closer to your own rank at the start of the month.
I also prefer the overall game structure of Faeria (which surprises me because I wouldn't have thought there was any game I'd enjoy more than Hearthstone). It's a beautiful synergy of board game and card game. Each turn you can create a land on the board, and the cards you can play depend on a mix of what lands you have built and the mana (called faeria) you've collected. You can collect that mana faster by moving your creatures to certain edge points on the board, but doing so means not charging straight for your opponent. You can play cards that require few lands earlier, but doing so means playing slightly weaker cards.
Balancing these things makes for fun deckbuilding and makes each turn of the game a fun puzzle to solve. They've even created some solo puzzles to solve, where you're given a board state and have to figure out how to win on the current turn. Some are surprisingly challenging.
If you're interested in trying Faeria, but aren't sure, I'm happy to answer any questions about it below. I hope that it can be as fun and meaningful for you as it has been for me.
I just want to correct you, that you don’t go back to the bottom of the ladder anymore, you only go down 4 ranks, and once you’ve made it to rank 5, 10, 15, or 20, you can’t go below until the season resets.
Or you might've just burned out, which is fine. I recently played faeria on my friends account a little, its decent but not worth investing 20 dollars into imo
I care too. I see that a lot of card games in the future will be B2P, i think F2P kind of model will become obsolete, it's tedious. Sorry Blizz, but i believe less and less people will put up with the milking.
The true test isn't during when it is new hotness for you, come back in 2 years and say the same thing. Most likely you will have moved onto something new by then, Artifact perhaps.
Blizzard's business practices are what they are now because it works. They attract a large f2p audience, hook them, and then convert them to paying customers through the importance and difficulty of getting a larger collection.
With Faeiria and Artifact having a vastly different bussiness model, Blizzard may finally have to give up their "monopoly" on the digital card game market and start changing their business model to be competitive with newcomers. Of course, this would only happen if the other card games actually start to threaten HS. I don't know if they will, because HS is, at the core, casual, simple, intuitive, gorgoues, and f2p at entry, not to mention incumbent in the market. The other games are a bit more complicated, and pay to play at entry, meaning their audience will take much longer to grow.
I know I'm going to try Artifact when it comes out, but let's be honest, Artifact attracts a nicher, more hardcore gamer market. If you're reading this, you're on a gaming forum, which automatcally makes you much more of a hardcore HS gamer than a majority of the playerbase, which mumbers in the millions. In my books, what Blizzard really needs to consider is the f2p experience of HS, which imo is abyssmal right now. If starting the game means getting matched up against golden full collection heroes only a week in, they can't hook incoming players into staying and eventually paying, especially since paying to become competetive means paying a LOT. The game has become too large to keep as it started, the business model needs a revamp. At this point, only people like me and other people that frequent forums can even hope to keep up without paying, or bother to pay every expansion. And if you can't keep up, you quit sooner rather than later.
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I was an avid Hearthstone player for almost two years. I've dropped it and taken up Faeria instead. I want to share why with other Hearthstone players because I've found Faeria to be an incredibly fulfilling and rewarding experience.
I was a passionate free-to-play Hearthstone player. I played enough to collect more than half of the legendaries when Un'goro came out, making it to a full 12 wins in arena about a dozen times. After a while, it felt like I was playing more to get cards than to actually have fun.
The unpleasant thing about free-to-play games is that to remain free-to-play they have to build in hooks to keep you coming back, to keep you wanting to play continually until you pay. Paying for a book is something I can do once and not worry about getting continued value out of it later. I can pick it up to re-read if I want it, but I don't have to return to it regularly or else miss out. But playing a free-to-play game without paying for it means that you have to engage with it continually if you want to have enough in-game resources to be competitive. I did that for Hearthstone until I felt drained.
And paying for Hearthstone didn't seem reasonable to me. For $50 at an expansion launch, I could have gotten about as many cards as I would get in two weeks of playing arena, and that would likely only include a couple of legendaries, nowhere near a full set.
I pay to play Faeria. And I enjoy myself a lot more.
With Faeria, you pay $25 to get the full set of cards. So that you can really enjoy the full flavor of building a collection, this still happens through earning in-game experience, but the pace is so different as to make Hearthstone collection-building laughable. I had my full Faeria collection within about 70 hours of starting, and they've recently doubled the experience rewards, so that new players can probably get a full collection within about 35 hours. I like this structure because it helped me to discover each card in turn rather than suddenly having about 400 different cards thrown in my face. It was enough time to discover the flavor of each without being so slow as to feel like I'm playing just to get the cards. To keep things lively they're releasing new expansions every two months, with half the expansion coming out each month. The expansions cost $14 each.
The ladder structure for Faeria is better too. Instead of dropping almost to the bottom of the ladder when it resets each month, you just drop to the bottom of the current level band you're in. That makes leveling back up faster, and also ensures that you're matched up to people closer to your own rank at the start of the month.
I also prefer the overall game structure of Faeria (which surprises me because I wouldn't have thought there was any game I'd enjoy more than Hearthstone). It's a beautiful synergy of board game and card game. Each turn you can create a land on the board, and the cards you can play depend on a mix of what lands you have built and the mana (called faeria) you've collected. You can collect that mana faster by moving your creatures to certain edge points on the board, but doing so means not charging straight for your opponent. You can play cards that require few lands earlier, but doing so means playing slightly weaker cards.
Balancing these things makes for fun deckbuilding and makes each turn of the game a fun puzzle to solve. They've even created some solo puzzles to solve, where you're given a board state and have to figure out how to win on the current turn. Some are surprisingly challenging.
If you're interested in trying Faeria, but aren't sure, I'm happy to answer any questions about it below. I hope that it can be as fun and meaningful for you as it has been for me.
You can find the Faeria Steam page here.
Hmm, I don't think anyone cares why you stop playing a video game.
Good to see others playing and LOVING Faeria! It's a MUCH better game than Hearthstone, and Faeria has been my main card game for a while now too :)
I do.
seems like an ad to me.
I'm always looking for something to quell my Hearthstone addiction so I'll give it a try.
Ha! I'm not an ad. I'm just absolutely in love with Faeria.
I don't, but I'll venture a guess.... Hearthstone costs too much, Faeria doesn't?
You care enough to read and comment, apparently.
Free to try and find a game, dealing cards for sorrow, cards for pain.
Only d-bags shill for other games.
I just want to correct you, that you don’t go back to the bottom of the ladder anymore, you only go down 4 ranks, and once you’ve made it to rank 5, 10, 15, or 20, you can’t go below until the season resets.
There is a "Off Topic" place for other games just so u know...
Or you might've just burned out, which is fine. I recently played faeria on my friends account a little, its decent but not worth investing 20 dollars into imo
Unpopular opinion: Rogue is OP
I care too. I see that a lot of card games in the future will be B2P, i think F2P kind of model will become obsolete, it's tedious. Sorry Blizz, but i believe less and less people will put up with the milking.
So do they give free packs for the ads?
Ready for action
If you are not playing Hearthstone anymore..why are you here? On a Hearthstone forum site?
Is it because Faeria has troubles keeping their players and thus you have to reach out in order to maintain a certain level of playerbase?
These newer games are more kind to new players because they need to get an audience.
Once they have enough players I bet their business model won't be so generous anymore.
Hearthstone was the same in the beginning.
Remember adventure?
not sure if it's worth it with artifact coming out in a few months.... :/
The true test isn't during when it is new hotness for you, come back in 2 years and say the same thing. Most likely you will have moved onto something new by then, Artifact perhaps.
Blizzard's business practices are what they are now because it works. They attract a large f2p audience, hook them, and then convert them to paying customers through the importance and difficulty of getting a larger collection.
With Faeiria and Artifact having a vastly different bussiness model, Blizzard may finally have to give up their "monopoly" on the digital card game market and start changing their business model to be competitive with newcomers. Of course, this would only happen if the other card games actually start to threaten HS. I don't know if they will, because HS is, at the core, casual, simple, intuitive, gorgoues, and f2p at entry, not to mention incumbent in the market. The other games are a bit more complicated, and pay to play at entry, meaning their audience will take much longer to grow.
I know I'm going to try Artifact when it comes out, but let's be honest, Artifact attracts a nicher, more hardcore gamer market. If you're reading this, you're on a gaming forum, which automatcally makes you much more of a hardcore HS gamer than a majority of the playerbase, which mumbers in the millions. In my books, what Blizzard really needs to consider is the f2p experience of HS, which imo is abyssmal right now. If starting the game means getting matched up against golden full collection heroes only a week in, they can't hook incoming players into staying and eventually paying, especially since paying to become competetive means paying a LOT. The game has become too large to keep as it started, the business model needs a revamp. At this point, only people like me and other people that frequent forums can even hope to keep up without paying, or bother to pay every expansion. And if you can't keep up, you quit sooner rather than later.