Hearthpwn

Quote from Mandelbr0t >>

Quote from DonCoyote >>

I fail to see a problem with a F2P deck making it to legendary. Aggro has always been the easiest path to legend, it's been true since the early deathrattle Hunter days. This is one of the most balanced metas I can ever think of.

 Why do people continue to propagate the FALSE narrative that near-equal CLASS distribution equals balance??  THAT IS NOT TRUE.  A balanced meta not only has near equal class distribution, but ALSO near equal DECK TYPE distribution.  How many good control decks are there right now?  How many good aggro decks?  The meta is NOT EVEN CLOSE to being balanced.  In fact, I'd argue that it's more important that the meta have equal distribution of deck type than class distribution.  In fact, until recently, when people spoke about "meta balance", deck type distribution is what they were talking about, and not class distribution.

 The problem with balancing by deck type is how insanely expensive anything other than an agro deck is. If, for example, control was a hard counter for aggro like it used to be, then the obvious smart play in the current meta would be to run a control deck. But due to it's high cost, only whales and long term f2p players can afford to field these decks. So, basically the game then becomes a p2w game with newer players running aggro decks, because it's all they can afford, getting curb stomped by long term/richer players. Not exactly a healthy situation for attracting and maintaining new blood.

Ok, so I went back and delved into it a bit more. I do think as currently laid out it's more generous then what we currently get. Everybody (myself included) is focusing too much on the upfront gold number. Without a doubt, that part is a nerf...you'd be opening less packs at the start of an expansion and that is the time when a pack has its most value. However, if you add it all up over the 4 months you do get a lot more. 3990 gold, 18 latest expansion packs +14 standard expansion packs. That's already 7190 gold equivalent. Then, you get 2 legendaries, 2 epics and 4 arena tickets. Even if you only count the dusted value of that stuff it's about another 1500g equivalent. While I know it's possible to earn more than 8000g per expansion, I feel like that's probably about right for freebie awards for those that grind out the whole season. You do get a bit more than that under their battlepass proposal. They could maybe be more generous with the number of epics they are handing out, but two legendaries I think is very nice.

Like everybody here, I'm still not sold on what are basically delayed rewards - old standard packs have far less value than current expansion packs, but I'll go ahead and try to take the devil's advocate position on this. By spreading out rewards over an entire season, perhaps you might see a more interesting and diverse meta. Everybody won't be instantly shifting towards the new cards. Paying players of course will have access to everything from the get-go like they always do. Long term f2p players that dust their wild collection will probably see more resources available to them and should be able to eventually play everything they could before. New players that just follow the battlepass will basically be following the most efficient way to spend their resources without having to do as much research on how to spend their resources (although Blizz should think about being more generous with classic packs for newer players). Also, keep in mind the experience system is front loaded...most of the rewards come sooner than later. In the first 3 weeks you're already 1/3 of the way through the chart.

I personally don't mind the implementation of a battle pass. I find the current reward system extremely boring. How many people have gotten the quest to play 3 games as a class they don't play and then have just gone to Tavern Brawl to queue up 3 afk games? I do this all the time and that's just terrible. And actually, the new way of 9k capped experience per week could be a great thing. We don't know yet how long it would take to earn it, but right now to complete a quest usually requires about 3 games...maybe less if you're hoarding them and completing them once your queue is full. Under the current system, if you want to maximize your rewards, you need to login every single day to at least reroll 50g quests and every 3 days to clear your quest log. If instead I could grind it all out in one day under a battlepass system, I would consider it a major improvement, as long as I could earn my max 9k in about 20 to 30 games.

However, like everybody else I can do the math on the rewards and see that's it way worse in both how stingy it is and distribution of rewards. 4k max gold to start a new expansion? You wouldn't even have all the rares available to you. Clearly a huge, huge nerf for the f2p player and I don't see how it wouldn't drive a lot of them away. Even the paid player loses out...they use free resources as well. And the paid tract doesn't look terribly attractive either. 30 bucks is what they suggest in their survey for that. But nobody is looking for something at that price point...we've already got $20 adventures and $50 pre-orders. F2p, but pay to play curious players are looking for something at a $5 to $10 price point.

Quote from TallStranger >>

Quote from JamesT >>

Yeah, what seemed rather unfair to me about my matches vs druid was that it's super fast AND super huge. I play a lot of rogue, and people are always complaining about Edwin, but the druid decks I was playing against would be dropping the equivalent of 3 8/8 Edwin's in the time I could get out one. One guy buffed the 'ish out of one of these things to something like 14/16 and still had like 4/7 mana left while I was looking at like 4 mana on my coming turn...yeah time to just concede. I dunno, it's still early in the meta I guess we'll see what happens.

 Okay, true in some cases. But I've also had decks where my first minion doesn't hit the board until turn 5, and it's a Lake Thresher. I've had several games where I never see Kael'thas Sunstrider. If you've been building a strong board early, it's going to be a much closer game.

But yes, as mentioned above, way too many people want to play their way or not at all. The game will always reward some decks over others. Right now, people still have what will eventually turn out to be bad cards in their deck, because "everyone knows these cards are going to be awesome" when, in fact, they aren't. It might simply be that, as of right now, Druid decks are closer to optimized than other classes'.

 I hear ya, I'm not calling for nerfs at this point. And as a rogue player it's not like I'm without a response with cards like Blackjack Stunner. Who knows, maybe it'll shake out that the overall winrate on the deck is something like 45% and just becomes meme status. It's just not very fun to play against. Fundamentally, I play Hearthstone because I want to play some cards...not see if a Druid player has the nuts on turn 4 or 5 while otherwise playing solitaire.

Yeah, what seemed rather unfair to me about my matches vs druid was that it's super fast AND super huge. I play a lot of rogue, and people are always complaining about Edwin, but the druid decks I was playing against would be dropping the equivalent of 3 8/8 Edwin's in the time I could get out one. One guy buffed the 'ish out of one of these things to something like 14/16 and still had like 4/7 mana left while I was looking at like 4 mana on my coming turn...yeah time to just concede. I dunno, it's still early in the meta I guess we'll see what happens.

If he went first, why don't you have the coin?

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NA region

https://battle.net/recruit/LNXPKB5DX6?blzcmp=raf-hs&s=HS&m=pc

Battletag: JamesT#11235

Region: NA

Trade only? : yes, you go first

Battletag: JamesT#11235
Region: NA
Usual Play Times: Days-Evening EST
Level of Experience: Noob
Preferred Heroes: Rogue
I’m Looking For: friend/quest exchange