Hearthpwn

Well, if all classes had secrets, I personally don't think cards like Secretkeeper or Eaglehorn Bow would be OP. I mean, you can currently play them with secrets against decks that also have secrets as it is now and they aren't overpowered under those circumstances, just more useful.

That being said though, I don't believe every class should have secrets. Much like weapons, I'm okay having them restricted to certain classes. Having that form of variety is a good thing IMO. But weapons have ways of being countered. Many ways in fact. Bloodsail Corsair, Acidic Swamp Ooze and Harrison Jones directly hard counter weapons. The only hard counter to secrets is Flare. Sad panda :(

Quote from agyagasztal »

I wouldn't say that. Like in the other thread asking for spell taunts, it would be a card like the ooze, that's a very specific answer for very specific situation. And just like with the ooze, unless the meta involves a ton of such situations, most people wouldn't run it, because it would be a dead card most of the time, or at least sub-par to other options you could run in the slot. At the moment I cannot see the meta shifting into a secret-saturated zone, thus a specific anti-secret card, even if available for any class, would be a sub-par option. So introducing an anti-secret card wouldn't kill off secrets, exactly because it is unnecessary and most people wouldn't run such card.

Agreed. If a neutral secret removal card was added, there's no guarantee everybody would run it in their deck. In fact, it's likely that very few people would because of the reasons pointed out in this thread. Excellent point.

I agree with ieuanm that just watching pros play arena will teach you a lot. Hafu is a great example because she is an incredible arena player, so watching her you can learn a lot.

That being said, arena is a fine balance between, luck and skill. To average 7+ wins, skill plays more of a factor but there's a lot and I mean a lot of luck involved starting at the very beginning with the draft itself. Even pros with a horrible draft can only do so much with it, at which point it's a matter of getting the most value out of your garbage cards.

Practice definitely makes perfect. What worked for me personally is accumulating a lot of gold by playing normal/ranked and questing. I'd recommend at least 1,500 gold but I had about 2,000 gold before I started and then I went on an arena spree. Personally I think that method is better than just popping in the arena the moment you have 150g as you start to become more accustomed to playing it.

I'd also recommend playing in the evening when most people are off work and or playing on the weekends during the day. That's when a majority of players will be playing which means there's a larger pool of 'new' players the game can match you up with, giving you better odds at ranking higher.

Hope this helps, good luck.

I think a heroic mode for Naxx to unlock golden cards is a great idea. I hope Blizzard ends up doing that. A much more challenging version where the bosses are much more difficult with better decks. Completing class challenges would be much more difficult but would award the golden class cards. I approve of this idea.

Quote from Pilleri »

Quote from CasmX »

Yeah, I posted this very idea on the official HS forums and there's a pretty interesting discussion going on over there too. One idea that cropped up was to make the cards for the draft pull from your own personal card collection. Otherwise the people that play only for Arena would stop paying for it.

You can manipulate your personal card collection to your advantage if you like winning more than your own game experience. "Oops the only epic I have in my collection is Sea Giant" or something towards that extent. Things would get very broken very quickly, IMO.

As I said earlier, not all players care about their card collections AT ALL.

EDIT: Even with the "never owned" rule, one can still make a fresh account and never open packs. Remember, you get dust from regular Arena as a reward. So you never have to open a pack to get a card to get dust to craft a card. You can just play Arena, get dust, craft cards, never open the reward packs.

Honestly, if people were willing to play arena just to get dust and never open packs to 'tweak' their personal collection for Casual Draft, I'd say power to them. It would take a lot of arena play to accomplish that. If that's what they enjoyed doing and were willing to put in the time and effort to do it, I wouldn't have a problem with it. Also, I have a feeling the number of people that would actually be willing to do that I think would have to be incredibly small or damn near non-existent.

It would be difficult to be so dedicated to arena play and yet suck so hard at it at the same time.

I have to admit, I laughed out loud when I read that. Excellent point overall though, I completely agree.

Yeah, that also came up in the other thread as well. Someone suggested to remove the retire option but that would just lead to people conceding 3 times in a row. My suggestion was to limit the number of times you could do Casual Draft to 10 per day but still give people the option to retire if they wanted. This way people likely wouldn't concede and would think twice before auto-retiring bad decks.

Yeah, I posted this very idea on the official HS forums and there's a pretty interesting discussion going on over there too. One idea that cropped up was to make the cards for the draft pull from your own personal card collection. Otherwise the people that play only for Arena would stop paying for it.

What this would accomplish is allow players to play randomly drafted decks against other random decks without the limit of 2 cards per deck, but still provide incentive to play regular Arenas to unlock more cards so you can have more options for your random casual drafts. It's an idea worth considering I think.

Edit: I'd also have to say that the cards should remain unlocked for Casual Draft once you have ever owned the card, regardless if it's still in your collection. I could easily see people disenchanting every crap card they've ever had to make sure they never get them during the draft and this would prevent that.

Quote from user_674294 »

but if there is a free version, why would you need to win any gold?

To get more cards to complete your collection and to unlock future content ie: Naxxramas.

People usually play arena though to try and get a win streak for rewards. That wouldn't change.

Wait a minute. Perhaps I didn't make myself clear or people are getting confused. Casual draft wouldn't have rewards. At least nothing beyond the 10 gold every 3 wins like the other modes currently offer. So, the incentive to earn gold and play Arena still exists, which is why I'm confused as to why people would stop playing it. You would still spend money/gold on arena to draft a deck in an attempt get wins and earn rewards just like you do now. That wouldn't be possible in Casual Draft so you can't just play arenas for free.

So, that being said, I don't understand why people would ever stop playing arenas if this were to be implemented. Why would you stop trying to earn rewards just because you could a play draft mode that doesn't have them? That's what I'm not following because in my mind, that makes 0 sense.

Ultimately though, even if I personally don't understand why people would stop playing it, if enough people have that mentality then that's reason enough for Blizzard to not implement it. I know I would continue to try and earn rewards through arena though. I mean, why wouldn't I? But I guess not everybody thinks that way. *shrug* 

Huh. Baffles me that people would actually stop using the most effective way to earn gold/cards if they implemented this. IMO it'd just be another method to do your quests and earn your 10g/3 wins to unlock more arenas. But, if people actually would stop playing arenas if this was made available (seems silly to me) well, okay then.

I'm just curious but why would people stop doing arenas if they made a casual way to play draft? I'm somewhat lost on the logic behind that mentality. People don't stop doing ranked because of casual or vice-versa. *shrug* makes no sense to me.

Quote from firekindle »

I think they have all the traffic they need. If the game needs anythhing, it is MORE ways to spend gold, not more free options.

Nothing would prevent them from adding more ways to spend gold. This entire mode could be a 1 time gold/money purchase much like Naxxramas would be.

Still though, this is starting to get off topic. This isn't about whether Blizzard actually would or would not implement this idea or what they should be doing instead. It's just a simple hypothetical, if they did implement something like this, would you play it?

From a business perspective they would implement it to bring in more traffic by adding more options for the players. Honestly, do you really think people would stop playing arena if they added something like this? Serious question because I know I wouldn't.

Edit: If anything I think it may actually bring in more arena traffic than there currently is. As I said, people would practice with Casual Draft and when they feel confident they would move on to arena. Arena is still the single best way to earn gold and unlock cards and would remain so even if this was implemented.

I wouldn't have DE'd the murlocs. Like everything else in the game, you just know that more are going to be added eventually. Hell, while very extremely highly unlikely, there could be a new Naxxramas murloc. (though the chances seem very small since murlocs didn't actually exist in Naxxramas, but you never know!)

My thought was something along the lines of Arena except no gold/cash required. You draft a deck just like you do in arena and you just play against other people who are also playing Casual Draft until you get 3 losses.

Think of it as a combination of Casual and Arena. Every 3rd win would award you 10 gold just like casual and ranked does now. Doesn't have a ranked version, doesn't count towards your ranked wins for a golden hero, you just click the button, draft a deck and go.

Me personally? I would totally play this. I would think of it as Arena practice. It'd also be a no pressure/stress free environment for that style of play because you're not really out anything when you do lose.

Thoughts?