Hearthpwn

While I feel some of their design has been lazy, it is a good idea.

We have to see the whole set, but I like the buff hand + things like the 4 cost kodo. If there are more interactions like that I think it will be great design.

Quote from Ophion >>

They have introduced several new mechanics. To name a few: Discover, cards that care about your deck state (Reno), cards that care about previously played cards (C'thun, Arcane Giant), cards that shuffle other cards into a deck, cards that play other cards directly from your deck, cards that trigger on discard.

The reason Magic keywords everything is because those effects otherwise needs a lot of text, which can be troublesome if you want many effects on a card. Hearthstone instead leaves out information to simplify reading, for example there is no information on Lord Jaraxxus or Majordomo about their Hero Powers.

If there is any criticism that I'd give in this area, that would be the lack of new card types. Minion, Weapon, Spell and Secret are all we've got, so there could easily be more progress made there.

Tribes have been expanded on several times. Beasts were promoted in Druid recently, Pirates were promoted in Warrior, Murlocs got a whole new archetype in Paladin, Dragon interaction was introduced, and back in GvG there was the Mech invasion. These aren't new tribes, but they didn't have much of a representation before these additions.

New strategies and archetypes are sometimes introduced, but in the end it all breaks down into a few eternal archetypes, like Face/Burn or OTK. This never really changed in Magic either, it's hard to make something truly new without changing the core workings of the game. But to name some additions: Fatigue, Mill, and many decks based on single unique deck-enabling cards like Astral Communion, Patron and Reno.

Quote from Baittz >>

I don't want Paladins to be OP, I want to have a decent archetype for him that is not zooish (which is basically all new cards for him this set).

Quote from 4wd >>

I like fast games focused on minion combat more, it's better for climbing. But it's  what not going to happen with Priest ultra-Control meta. I only hope combo decks will exist so I have not play stupid Priest by myself. I like to deal damage to face, not receive, reactive classes are not for me.

Quote from dirbrian >>

They weren't exaggerating about wanting Dragon Priests to be a core of the class

Quote from kecskecigany >>

Don't be stupid. This is the dream for miracle rogue

i really feel blizzard just needs to put their foot down and come out and say something along the lines of "this game isnt supposed to be competitive, we made this game so players can play for fun, we will continue to treat it as such as release more RNG and more "zany" cards. Sorry if the tournament scene made you believe otherwise, but we are sticking to the games strengths"

this thread really shows why blizzard decided to make a mindless card game. i couldnt imagine a lot of people in this thread actually playing a real competitive card game :|

you realize blizzard isnt a CCG company right? this game is big because of the brand, until they hire actual CCG developers dont expect much. people want this game to be super competitive and want the game to be deeper than it actually is pretending like blizzard actually knows what they are doing.

like i dont get it, let blizzard do what they're doing, dont try to force stuff on a game.

blizzard probably doesnt even know where to start when making new classes, not to mention this game's design space is probably too small to make new classes that actually feel different.

Quote from Toymachine >>

Quote from lorfn >>

 

So there is someone here like me that likes to win but with fun stuff ????!  ....  

Everyone plays whatever they want to (and it's fun to them, why would anyone play a game that is not fun?)... maybe your idea of fun is different? I find Mid Shaman very fun, and I win with it - it became one of my favorite classes. Last season I played with Dragon Priest, also winning and having fun, before that Token Druid - also fun, before that Hunter etc. I play only what's fun for me and what I want to play.

Just cos you don't like certain decks doesn't mean they are not fun by definition. 

"Have you ever tried to play fatigue warrior. The game becomes a mind-game and it's really fun" - for you maybe, I hate it, most boring shit I ever played and I will never play it again, matches are so long, nothing to do with mind-games, goal is always the same and game plan doesn't change depending on deck you face like with Midrange... See? It's not fun for me, but obviously is for you.

So guys, don't assume that what's fun to you personally is fun for everyone, people play whatever they want for whatever the reasons they have - ultimately to have fun in game that might differ from your idea of fun (in your example it's: armor up and play 30 min one match "mind-games").

No they are not f2p.I am f2p and i bought 80 packs and i had 11000 dust that allows me to experiment.They are just bottom feeders that are  afraid to experiment or assholes who enjoy ruining fun for others. 

Because they are fucking retarded and don't give a flying shit about balance. They prove this by waiting 3-4 months for ever making changes.

Fool yourself all you want but reality is the skillcap is very low in Heartstone, it's really unrepresented in a "competitive" game. Skill doesn't matter much, most plays are obvious and pretty auto-pilot, no matter how much people argue against it. Everyone use the same decks anyway if you are lucky you win if not your opponent wins. Moreover when it comes the fact that a card game is inherently RNG heavy and no matter how "skilled" you are, a huge portion comes from the luck element, more than any other game.

Plus Heartstone has many RNG cards that amplify that. How dumb it is to take Heartstone seriously and accredit any value to "skill" can be seen by the fact that these RNG moments so called e-Sports. So yeah, skill makes for a pretty low portion of success, once you are at a certain level. Of course you will be punished if you missplay every turn, but like I said you need to understand the basic of the game which is pretty easy.

Wanna become legend? Time is all you need, if you have a "working" deck. Like all players do, the latter part is just a few clicks away or keep fooling yourself I don't mind that.

Is this remotely surprising? Ever since Activision took over Blizzard every single game design decision has been focused on milking as much cash as possible out of a franchise, they greatly homogenized and simplified World of Warcraft and introduced legalized gold selling and buying levels, they launched Diablo 3 with a real money auction house, and ever since they realised the commercial viability of Hearthstone they've pushed the aggro curvestone theme as hard as possible to ensure many games are decided by turn 3 or 4 for the casual phone user. 

The irony is, whilst their crude methods provide an an upfront cash injection to their business it greatly damages their product and reduces their lifespan. World of Warcaft subscription number have been in a freefall since Wrath to the point where they now won't even disclose official numbers, the outcry over the state of Diablo 3 on launch incredibly forced them to backtrack on their monetization of that game and damaged the reputation of the franchise, and with the growing unrest over the ActiBlizzard-enforced curvestone gameplay many pros will look to jump ship to other games and I predict Hearthstone to stagnate badly over the next 12-18 months. 

What ActiBlizzard fail to realize, or simply don't care about, is that their merciless milking of each franchise alienates the original core audience and many of the high-level players, and those people turning their back on the game hurts the competitive scene and general community sentiment around the game. This negativity then filters down into the common masses who ActiBlizzard desperately gutted each franchise in order to cater for/extract money from, and eventually sends each game into a downward spiral.

The problem is that when Blizzard has a game that is available on multiple platforms they pick one platform to be the "main platform" and tend to balance the game around that player base. High skill players play almost exclusively on computers while Blizzard is pretty clearly trying to make Hearthstone a phone/tablet game. The same problem is happening in Overwatch where console players get no love, no access to the PTR, balance changes are done around computer players and even on the Blizzard forums Jeff Kaplan will respond to complaint threads with 10 pages but complaints from console players will go to like 50 pages and never get a response. 

We often forget that Blizzard doesn't owe us anything just because we are good. Legend players make up less than 1% of the 50+ million players so why listen to them when you have 30 million players who are willing to spend money at rank 20 and below? Blizzard is a business and having a game that competes with candy crush is a lot more profitable than a game that is good for the top 1,000 players.

Here's some reasons that I feel show Blizzard never intended Hearthstone to be some super hardcore competitive game and they've been viewing at as a phone game for quit some time now.

1. The game at it's core is silly and whimsical. The art, the voice lines, the characters, the boards are all fairly simple and childish. I think this is Blizzard realizing people are starting  to play video games earlier and earlier so they are moving away from the Diablo style and more toward Overwatch/Hearthstone style.
2. They continually nerf long combo decks and push curvestone decks. Long combo decks are the only decks that play different on mobile than they do on computers just due to the amount of time they take to pull off the combo. I usually wind up roping when trying to win with miracle rogue or patron warrior and if I was trying to do this on my phone I probably would never be able to pull it off.A powerful deck that can only really be done on a computer isn't what Blizzard wants.
3. Hearthstone is set up like a microtransaction mobile game. If 2 players start at the exact same time but one decides to drop $100 and the other is f2p the one who payed will win almost 100% of the time they play each other.
4. Arena in my opinion is harder to play on a phone than casual or ranked on a phone and Blizzard has shown they really don't care about arena balance at all in the last few expansions.
5. According to Blizzard themselves 75% of the player base is below rank 15. Anyone that even plays 2 or 3 ranked games a day can probably climb higher than that meaning probably around 50% of all players just play a game or two in casual probably at work or on the bus or something.
6. Blizzard announced more expansions per year which also means more money per year in case you had forgotten they're a business.
7. The Hearthstone FAQ section on their actual site has 20 questions, 12 of which are just about playing on a phone or tablet.  
8. Pro players, streamers, legend players and most high level players are not particularly fond of the last 2-3 metas and are souring on the game as a whole but profits are continuing to go up and Blizzard has been pumping out aggro curvestone every expansion for over a year now.

It isn't that Blizzard is trying to drive out good players or that they hate legend players but they are trying to make a phone game that maximizes player base and therefore profit. No one says candy crush is an e-sport but it made over $200,000,000 last year and any company that has the ability to make a successful phone game but doesn't tap into that market is just foolish. Unfortunately for us on this forum though top 10 in the app store and fun yet complex high level gameplay don't typically go hand in hand.

Basically yeah, i think the game is kinda becoming a no-brainer. There are accasional games that do in fact require skill and some deeper knowledge of the game, but mostly it all comes to you or  your opponent making a mistake. Or just getting a better draw. What's most important is playing a deck with a 50%+ winrate and you're fine. Legend makes no sense (I'm telling you that, because I reached it a couple of times and it's not even close to be called an achievement. And I got to like top 250, maybe if I tryharded I would reach #1). The game doesn't reward you for playing complicated strategies but instead rewards you when you play fast-paced and simple decks with high winrate.

I heard Kripp say something that I found really interesting, he basically said that blizzard tries to find that sweet spot where they can please everyone, new players and veteran players, but what end up happening is they release new simple cards (so the game is kept simple for the new players) that soon become the meta but any non meta deck is complete garbage because their game balancing sucks. So we end up with new players who can't win because they don't have the cards and veteran players who can't enjoy the game because the cards are too simple and the meta is boring.

BLIZZARD IS TRASH.

Quote from Mewdrops >>

Quote from DirtyRat3000 >>

 i saw insults. all they say is aggro is stupid, brainless, retarded. if the reason is "thinking", chess is a better game to play.

 Well, people say that so they feel better about losing to them.

Chess and Hearthstone are completely different games. It's like telling someone who likes basketball and wants to play basketball to go and play soccer.