Hearthpwn

Quote from DarkArchon21 >>

Overall exciting times and great changes ahead. The only cloud in the sky is that i can't believe they made Warglaives of Azzinoth an exact duplicate of Fool's Bane, the only thing they did was reword it. Very disappointing to one of the most iconic weapons ever in WoW history. It should have had addition text like ''if it kills a minion, summon a 2/1 Flame of Azzinoth''. It's just kind of funny how in the past they made this big stink on class identity and literally just do a copy pasta from another class. 

 It's not an exact duplicate: you can attack heroes, you just can't attack again afterwards. You could, for example, attack 3 minions then face, or 2 minions then face, etc. 

Quote from RaptorWithWings >>

Battlegrounds is still effectively free. It looks like to me that the Tavern Pass is just another way to get the perks of Battlegrounds like emotes and extra hero choices. If you don’t play regular Hearthstone much but you want the perks, then you can get the pass instead of buying a ton of packs. It also gives you arena tickets, so you get a few tries in that mode as well

 But on the other hand, if you DO play regular HS (but don't want to pay real money and/or preorder) then you're down 25 packs worth of gold. How much gold did the perks used to cost in card packs last time around? Did you have to buy 25? If so then this is a pretty strong negative for those people 

 I'm confused, do you mean the ones where you had to construct a deck from your collection? And didn't have the awesome passives etc etc etc? 

New Zealand is NZD$79.99/NZD$125.99 on Android 

Quote from Dunscot 

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Trying to coax people into spending as much as possible is generally deemed unethical.

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Considering that Hearthstone already works by a lootbox system 

Snip

 Just some small corrections/comments here: trying to convince your customers to spend more money is what all salespeople in every field do for a living. And all marketers I suppose. It's the nature of retail. You are showing people that by spending more money you are getting more value, and therefore spending the money is good for both parties. This is normal, not unethical. Unethical behavior is trying to deceive people into thinking they'd be better off when they wouldn't, like payday lenders who prey on the needy, or people who market inaccurately. If Blizzard had marketed the big bundle as giving you a hero when you actually had a 1% chance to open one then you'd have a point. As it is, spending more gives you more packs, which you can, entirely at your discretion, turn into cards you want by dusting,, or open cards you want, etc. 

That leads me to point two. Calling the system a "lootbox" system ignores a number of important points. Firstly the dust system; the more packs you open, you are GUARANTEED to eventually get the cards you want because you can dust the cards you get and make the card you want. Sure, we can argue on the value, but the analysis here was done entirely on dust value (and yes there is variance but eventually you will get to the average value. That's how statistics work). Secondly, 'boosters' have been a part of collectible card games for a very long time (possibly forever, certainly since MTG in the early 90s and I'm not sure any came before). Sure, you can buy individual cards  but a single top card will go for FAR more than you will buy a full T1 HS deck for. And you can't get any of them for free like HS. Nor can you play nearly as much.

And finally, if we're defining a "whale" as anyone who would spend $130 on a computer game then every single AAA game sold caters 100% to 'whales', and if we expand this definition to people who will spend over $130 on something they enjoy then it also will include most people who go to sports matches, and who play sport or dance competitively, and people who go out every weekend drinking etc etc etc. Smokers? HUGE whales. I could go on. Ever spend $100 in a shop on something you like? Computer keyboard? How much did your monitor cost? Graphics card? Man, you're a mega-whale. So the word isn't really fit for purpose, and is really only serving as unnecessary hyperbole in a thread about facts and figures. 

Quote from dr_nova >>

"They like two legendaries per class in sets because it allows them to take classes in two different directions."

Yeah, right. When that's two different directions gameplay-wise (quests, Death Knights, weapons) I can understand that, but two different directions lore-wise? "A monster and a member of the town"? Come on. Just admit you were greedy and ran out of ideas.

 I assume you realise that the names of the cards don't come pre-designed with what they do? It's pretty easy for them to decide on two different ways to play a class (steal opponents cards vs Inner Fire for Priests, for example) and then to put whatever character on top of that. As you can see here, Face Collector originally did a bunch of different things... So clearly what the card does, and whether it's a monster or a town member are completely unrelated.

But hey, don't let me steal your tinfoil hat

Malygos + Bloodmage Thalnos + Swipe + Swipe + Moonfire + Moonfire 

= 36 damage

I'm not sure this is correct. Malygos gives +5, Bloodmage gives +1, (for a total +6). Multiply by 4 spells= 24 damage. Add 4 each for 2 swipes (8) and 1 each for two moonfires (2) gives 10, add the 24 spell damage gives 34.

Did I miss something? 

There are a number of issues with the premise here. I'm posting from my cell so multiple quotes is time consuming...for that reason imm either copy-pasta or write out the gist of what I'm referring to by hand. 

First issue is in the OP. It is stated that aggro won't need an armor-tech card, nor will control or Midrange as all can control the board, or chip through armor or would become obnoxious with the tech. Then it is stated that therefore the card is needed for OTK decks, since players building up armor has no counterplay for those decks.

This misses a crucial point  which is that OTK decks by their definition are decks that rely on their opponents having no ability to counterplay. In return, there is the counterplay to the OTK which is building armor to a level that can't be burst through. Stating that counterplay to an OTK has no counterplay and thinking that this is bad and needs counterplay is extending circular logic to absurd levels. What would be the counterplay to the counterplay (armor destruction) to the counterplay (armor gain) to OTK (unstoppable without high armor)??

The other issue is this in a post some way down: "The main problem is the ambiguous nature of armor itself. While reducing armor is basically identical to dealing damage, ADDING armor is NOT identical to healing. (This can be impressively seen in a Priest / Warrior matchup. While the Priest Hero Power is pretty useless in the first rounds, Warrior can add up a fair amount of "additional Health"...)"

This is stated as a problem. 'Man, these two things aren't the same, one can give you more than 30 life, so we need to find a way to stop this' . This is the wrong way of looking at this difference. These two mechanics didn't come into being separately by accident, nor did Priest and Warriors hero powers just appear with the classes. They were DESIGNED this way. These were conscious decisions made by designers because they felt it would add to the game. You may disagree, but you know, it's their game. Saying that it needs a counterplay (other than the obvious, damage) is like saying they should have capped total effective health at 30, or had armor never be in the game. Maybe you're right, but it would be a narrower game, and it wasn't their design.

Tl:Dr; armor is in the game and was designed as it is. If your OTK can't get through it, design a quicker OTK or accept that you won't beat a deck that builds armor. Or don't play OTK  they're uninteractive and Blizzard don't like them anyway. 

For the record, I just did that, it didn't draw. Just in case anyone anywhere actually had any doubt.

I came to the thread expecting to find complaints about cards. Very pleasantly surprised! I like all three suggestions (although I'm not sure about changing boards retrospectively, nostalgia and all that. But definitely going forwards).

Quote from GhostD >>

Am i the only person on the planet who realizes the real reason why they're releasing it so long after the expansion launched is so they make more money/syphon out more gold from players by reducing the value you get from the 15 packs that come with the adventure?

Opening packs of a new expansion is worth way more than opening packs from the previous one since you mostly open cards you don't have and thus don't have to craft them, everyone knows that. The more cards from a set you own the less value you get from opening those packs.

Let's say they release the adventure when the expansion launches or soon after, if you plan to buy for example 30 packs and craft the stuff you don't open, you just get the adventure + an aditional 15 packs, done - you spent $40

No, I would expect everyone to intuit that it's a profit-driven decision.  If you plan on buying the full adventure and you could do so and collect all 15 packs on launch day, who wouldn't then just do that and spend $20 less on card bundles?  The other part of the equation which you didn't mention is player engagement--if they release the expansion a month after the card release, they will get a bump in activity, including some players who might otherwise stop playing ~3 weeks after the first release.  It's their game; I believe they have a right to monetize it however they see fit so they can afford to keep developing and maintaining it. 

As a comparison: I paid ~$25 back in April to see Avengers Endgame with my wife the weekend that it came out.  Right now, we could rent Avengers Endgame for $5, or we could probably wait long enough to see it for free on cable (i.e., it would effectively cost us some portion of that cable bill).  It's the same movie, and the only reason why it doesn't come straight to cable is because they are trying to make more profit from the people like me that don't want to wait.  And because it is so profitable, they're able to finance more MCU movies with big stars / thoughtful script / great FX which I'll probably pay another $25 to see opening weekend.  That's just the business model that movie production companies use; you can either accept it and patronize at whichever cost/wait tier that you're comfortable with or you can do something else with your free time.

Quote from Ganashal >>

Quote from Dunscot 

>

 Snip

Trying to coax people into spending as much as possible is generally deemed unethical.

Snip

Considering that Hearthstone already works by a lootbox system 

Snip

 Just some small corrections/comments here: trying to convince your customers to spend more money is what all salespeople in every field do for a living. And all marketers I suppose. It's the nature of retail. You are showing people that by spending more money you are getting more value, and therefore spending the money is good for both parties. This is normal, not unethical. Unethical behavior is trying to deceive people into thinking they'd be better off when they wouldn't, like payday lenders who prey on the needy, or people who market inaccurately. If Blizzard had marketed the big bundle as giving you a hero when you actually had a 1% chance to open one then you'd have a point. As it is, spending more gives you more packs, which you can, entirely at your discretion, turn into cards you want by dusting,, or open cards you want, etc. 

That leads me to point two. Calling the system a "lootbox" system ignores a number of important points. Firstly the dust system; the more packs you open, you are GUARANTEED to eventually get the cards you want because you can dust the cards you get and make the card you want. Sure, we can argue on the value, but the analysis here was done entirely on dust value (and yes there is variance but eventually you will get to the average value. That's how statistics work). Secondly, 'boosters' have been a part of collectible card games for a very long time (possibly forever, certainly since MTG in the early 90s and I'm not sure any came before). Sure, you can buy individual cards  but a single top card will go for FAR more than you will buy a full T1 HS deck for. And you can't get any of them for free like HS. Nor can you play nearly as much.

And finally, if we're defining a "whale" as anyone who would spend $130 on a computer game then every single AAA game sold caters 100% to 'whales', and if we expand this definition to people who will spend over $130 on something they enjoy then it also will include most people who go to sports matches, and who play sport or dance competitively, and people who go out every weekend drinking etc etc etc. Smokers? HUGE whales. I could go on. Ever spend $100 in a shop on something you like? Computer keyboard? How much did your monitor cost? Graphics card? Man, you're a mega-whale. So the word isn't really fit for purpose, and is really only serving as unnecessary hyperbole in a thread about facts and figures. 

Nice post.

Spending a dollar-a-day on a hobby isn't exactly a huge financial burden for a lot of folks. If the Mega Bundle becomes the new norm, then it amounts to an expenditure of $80 every four months - a lot less than a dollar-a-day. The game remains F2P, and an everyday player will be able to open a lot more than 80 packs every four months from all the gold they "earn" simply by playing the game - so there really isn't much to the complaint that HS is too expensive.

As far as "cosmetics shouldn't be hidden behind a pay-wall" - if anything, it's remarkable that the allegedly greedy bastards who run the company haven't crammed their online store with heroes, emotes, sprays, card backs, alternate art or any other sort of cosmetic you can think of. Instead, putative "whales" are strictly limited to purchasing packs, or three cosmetics. All the rest of the cosmetics have been released as part of one promotion or another - or simply as a "thank you" from Blizz to the community for playing their game, including two heroes, and a card back every month. Pretty greedy. If any of the critics can offer a better reason than "I just want it - for free" to why Blizz shouldn't make more cosmetics available for purchase, no one I'm aware of has bothered to suggest any . . .

Quote from aerymach11 >>

Perhaps they've been playing for years and have quite a collection, but don't play beyond doing their daily quests.

 ^ This.  

I've been playing since beta but pretty much just dailies due to lack of time and I like to make my own decks that I don't have too much time refining.  Until recently, I would regularly start a lot of my month at or below rank 20 since the most I would go up to is rank 15.  Even with the new changes, I still end up around rank 18 or so.  This month I quickly went back to 15 but only because my favorite deck just happened to also be one of the strongest decks this time in Even Shaman.  

Ranked.. doesn't really do that good a job separating casual long time players from newbies sadly.  

MEANwhiLE:

I hate the idea of meta decks - I mean where's the imagination if you're just going to copy what everyone else is playing?  But I guess that in itself means I'm giving myself a handicap.

 Imagine trying to learn how to build a computer when you have never done it before.  Now imagine doing so without looking at anyone building a computer, or practicing with one that already has instructions, or asking someone for help.  Just you, some random parts, many of which don't even GO to the computer you want to make, and an empty room.

Yeah, that's how 'handicaped' you are by avoiding meta decks completely.

Meta decks have been built by people who have spent years practicing the craft and thousands of hours (I'm NOT exaggerating) tweaking and analyzing the deck, all with the help of friends who do the same thing and professional players who have spent tens of thousands of hours playing with such decks.  That's WHY they work so #$)#*( well.

Some people dislike designing decks, so they are content to let the masters make the decks and to just play what works.  They enjoy the game their way.  Nothing wrong with that.  

You don't have to follow them. You sound like you like designing your own stuff.  But you **DO** need to realize you're a novice facing the artwork of masters.  You need SOMETHING to go off of.  

It's trickier than during my day but I know well practiced people still make 'budget' decks.  Also if you can make a meta deck without dusting half your collection (please don't do that!) then do so JUST to see how it feels like.  You really won't have a true idea of when you made a good deck until you feel what a 'good deck' feels like and why it works.  Then once you have that idea you can get an idea of what's missing from your deck.

From there go look up guides or just find these folks who make and play these meta decks and see how they think, what they worry about, and what they consider good ideas.  The goal isn't to COPY them. It's to learn in a few hours/months what they spent half a decade trying to figure out.  Get to the point where you can see WHY the decks look the way they do and WHY they are meta decks.  

Then as you are understanding that you'll find that the decks you make (yes feel free to make decks while doing all this) will get better.  Furthermore, assuming you're F2P, you'll start having a better idea of what cards you'll want to craft, because picking the right cards to craft for the decks you want to design is KEY since there's not much room in your gold/dust supplies to craft the wrong cards.  

Lastly, as you do this decide whether you want to aim to make competitive decks or fun decks.  Decks that do both can exist but it's good to have a focus as this will determine your goals.  If the former, you'll want to focus more on mastering meta decks and put your creativity towards after nerfs/expansions to join the race to the Meta that the pros do.  Design the decks that others will eventually make (I'm sure SOMEONE made Even Shaman long before it got popular).  If the latter, don't worry about the meta or what other players do and focus on making decks you wnat to find interesting. STILL learn from the pros so that you know HOW to make them: there's a difference between an interesting Lady in White deck and a stupid one, even if both aren't exactly top tier.

Quote from Ganashal >>

Quote from dylbertarenas >>

High 'mulligan WR' with a high 'kept %' is optimal.

 I disagree, or at least I think you may have bad logic... Without any supporting evidence or reasoning from you it's hard to say. High Mulligan WR (assuming picking from the matchup-specific list) is by definition optimal. Adding in high Kept% simply means that those are the ones the community gets right. A hypothetical situation where a card had a 100% Mulligan WR and a Kept% below 5%, if you follow your advice, you probably mulligan away when clearly that wouldn't be optimal. That would simply demonstrate that the card is far more vital than the community has realised 

 It could also be that high because of such a small sample size.  But in general I agree, the kept % can be misleading at times.  I think the main takeaway is that looking at the mulligan/kept WR percentages aren't set in stone rules on what you should keep.  You also have to take matchup into account, and your curve in general.  

Honestly Token druid is very viable in the meta and I'm surprised it doesn't see more play.

1. The Ungoro volcano animation was awesome. 2 expansions have come out since and I was very let down that they did not contain that same awesome effect from Ungoro. I would like to see new boards in the future contain a hidden awesome gem like this, and to retroactively add to all prior boards a little something special. I think this would make every board have something fun to do. Why not?

2.  Dungeon and monster hunt runs: Let them give gold. 3 wins gives you 5 gold, up to 50 gold per day. Its not much but its something. It would make running them when you dont feel like pvp seem a little more rewarding and its really not much. I barely have time a day to get 20 gold regularly. Other card games offer a rewarding pve experience that works, such as gauntlet in eternal or the pve arena in legends. *Edit* As mentioned in the replies by several users: Botting could abuse this - An alternative suggested by @Slyde was to award gold on completion of a dungeon run. This i think is a much better alteration.

3. I like the golden hero for 500 wins. Maybe add a crown or some other effect for 1000. Let those that have achieved this get a new goal.

4. I forgot about this one:

 Golden cards are cool, but of little effect. I think it would be a cool feature if you have an entire gold deck and get a win, you gain gold 2x as fast towards your 100 gold per day. 100 gold per day for pvp is still the cap.

This would encourage people wanting to risk a little bit less of a competitive deck for faster gains. Id love to play games against people trying this out, so its not the same copy/pasta decks. You might initially think, the rich get richer on this, but typically people with full gold sets that are "competitive" already play enough games a day to get their 100 gold with the current system. Its not like they are gonna stop once they get their hundred gold. I imagine the gold is an afterthought to them since they probably dump hundreds into the game on each expansion release as it is. Plus, this might encourage people to craft more gold cards, which would in-turn create more revenue for blizzard.

I dont see any of these as risky or destabilizing changes and will only add to peoples enjoyment of this game.

upvote or like if you agree. Maybe one of the community managers that browse these websites will take notice and bring up that the community would like to see some of these improvements in one of their meetings.

Quote from Oguzhan >>

Since I don't have the 80g quest I thought a topic like this might help me up.

1. You are low in both money and gold so you have to make every bit count, target specific decks and buy the packs that contain either the biggest amount of cards for that deck or the most expensive ones... i.e: If you want to build a deck and 12 cards are from K&C then buying those will get you closer, if you want to build a deck that costs 5k dust and 3.6k of those are from legendaries from the same set then your best bet is that set for sure.
2. Disenchant all the really crappy cards, I'm not a fan of dusting entire classes cause while that might immediatly help you it'll end up fucking you in the long term, you never know what'll be good in the future or fun w/e, but there are a lot, A LOT of shitty cards from all classes that don't see play and never will, and you being in such a tigh budget there's no point on keeping them, you'll never have even close to a complete collection, you need huge loads of money for that.
3. Save your IRL money just for pre-orders, I know getting packs and busting them open is one of the best feelings, I've spent more money than I should from time to time to keep getting more and more cards but as you said, you are on an strict budget but I'm sure you can save $50 in the next 4 months right? It's not a huge amount and the pre-orders always are more valuable cause they have more packs, whether Blizzard stays friendly and keeps the 70 packs pre-orders for good or they go back to the usual 50 it doesn't matter, it's still more bang for you buck.
4. Start saving gold 2 months before the new expansion, Blizzard releases their expansions on the same months, so while we don't always now the exact day the months are the same everytime so you can start saving so you can buy a lot of packs from the new expansion and with the pre-order you should have a solid ground to start playing from day 1
5. **THIS ONE DEPENDS ON A LOT OF THINGS** Play arena, is definitely the best bang for you buck if you can at least get 3 wins every time, that makes it so you get a pack and at least 50g so you break even and you should be getting better as you play so you can start getting more and more wins in the future. This strategy has 2 problems: A) Even the really good arena players can bust really hard, they can get 3 bad classes or just draw awful decks (Even while picking the best option every time)  and that's more common the worse you are and you'll naturally be not so good at first. B) Arena is not for everyone, My last 3 arenas have been 9-3/12-1 and 5-3 which if you think about it is a crazy average... My last arena was played during 2k17... And I played just 3 arenas in the whole year, I just heavily dislike the format, it's not for me, everytime I draft a deck and start playing I get bored after like 3-4 games, no matter how good or shitty the deck is, I honeslty can't wait to gtfo and play some constructed, the random elements of arena are very underwhelming to me, there are games you can lose from the start just cause the opponent's deck is better, and not cause you drafted poorly but just cause they got better options. In theory I could play arena and get more value out of my gold but honestly I would shoot myself after like a week if  that was the case.

Hope this little guide can help you friend.

I am of the opinion that Alexstrasza is too broken because it is essentially "Battlecry: Deal 15 damage to the enemy hero" for just one card. That is insane.

Your card would potentially be even worse. It would be something like "Battlecry: Deal 40 damage to the enemy hero" in some cases. For one card, that is an unfair amount of power.

Can armor stacking be frustrating? Yes. But the solution is not to run a single card to counter it. Because, if you have a card that removes all the opponent's armor, you will get decks that function like Alexstrasza, where all you have to do is run removal to control your opponent's board until you've assembled enough combo pieces, and then you can just play a single card to deal a significant amount of damage to the opponent. In other words, a card like this would reward players for ignoring the enemy hero completely, when the proper way to deal with lots of armor is to consistently play threats and attack the enemy hero.

The main reason this is coming up now is because Warrior and Druid have not only had a lot of armor generation pushed towards them, they also have a lot of Taunt synergy at the moment. Because of this, the player is able to protect himself through consistent armor generation AND deny that armor being destroyed by throwing up walls of taunts. Is this frustrating? Yes. But we can play around it. Quest Warrior and Hadronox Druid do not have 100% win rates, therefore there are solutions other than simply creating a tech card that can act as a nuke for combo decks (when the appropriate response to someone who will deal 30 to you from hand has always been to get yourself as far out of 30 range as possible via armor generation).

Don't expect to get 9, or 11 wins, Only 8, 10, or 12