Hearthpwn

Quote from nosebleed7 >>

OP, here is a follow up question, if you (or anyone) knows:

If you and your Opponent have multiple mercs, all with the exact same speed, does the initial coinflip between you and your opponent apply to your whole squad (of same speed mercs) or is each minion rolled seperatly?

For example, you have minion A and B, opponent has C and D. Both of you choose your personal order of attacks ("A first, B second"; and respectively "C first, D second").
Now, if you win the coinflip, is it ALWAYS "A first, B second, C third, D fourth"? And if he wins it would be "C first, D second, A third, B fourth"?
Or is it possible for example that it goes "A first, C second, B third, D fourth"?

 Pretty sure it's possible for things to be mixed up between you and your opponent. But not 100%, I will keep an eye out. Also it is easy to test if you get a speed 7 merc and see when they go compared to the masses of mobs that just Attack 7, IIRC the trees in Felwood autoattack first round and come in threes (heh) so good odds of figuring it out then and there.

And I found out the rule in the OP the hard way. My Samuro went first 3-4 times in a row in one bounty or maybe just fight, and I was like FFS this can't be a coincidence. And it wasn't. Then I thought it was PvE only but works on PvP too. THEN I thought it was a bug but still decided to share with you guys so you can enjoy it before a potential fix ;)

Very interested in the results of your experiment, keep posting. I will try to add to it by keeping track a little. Mostly rewards, keeping track of rarities is a bit much but maybe vaguely.

Still seems optimal farming strategy is to go for the easiest, non-HC bounty with the hero you want, ideally with that hero in party. Which is fairly obvious but did not know that HC gave equal coins, that is dumb.

You know how it the game tells you that when two minions have the same speed it is a coin flip which goes first? Took me a few days to realize that only applies to enemy minions. For your minions of the same speed the order in which you give them commands will always be the order in which they act. So for example you can 100% of the time activate Samuro with a speed 4 ability if your Xyrella bites it for example. This works in both PvE and PvP. It also helps with choosing which deathblow you want to proc. and so on.

Hope this helps someone be less of a clueless noob than I was ;)

Figure we need one, and I will open it with a meme I've made:

To my credit he did not flatten me, I held on for a long time but that just made it more hopeless ofc. Hardcountered his dumb ass next run though, on Normal :P

Let the salt flow.

Quote from fusilli >>

Quote from Neko_Tamo >>

Quote from emicampo >>

also the duplicate protection works in a fishy way, always in detriment of the players, as usual with blizzard

for example, i dont have all the epic mercs but i keep receiving stupid epic costumes of mercs that already have instead of a mercs that i dont have, luckily didnt happen to me with legendaries but if i collect coin by coin to purchase a f*****ing pack and i receive a cosmetic legendary instead of a legendary mercs i think i abandon the mode

 I seem to recall they said you can't get skins until you have all the mercs of the same rarity rank. I have so far gotten no skins for Rare mercs and I think I have all but three or so, this is mathematically highly implausible to say the least.

So hopefully it is a bug that gets patched post-haste.

 I got golden skin for Cariel early - possibly due to getting her from a Q. Other than that, I started getting some golden skins only after getting the last few rares.

 Yes I have golden Carrie too, it comes from the quest as you guessed.

From what I've understood of the Matchmaking dev post you can game the system in some ways. Only upgrade abilities you will use, upgrading ones you don't will give you tougher opponents for no gain. Same with items, either run a highly useful one or none at all when PvPing. If you have a wonky level distribution you are highly likely to get AI opponents, some here mentioned running 1-2 low level heroes for that, so that seems to bear out. Do not make le silly builds like a 6 protector team, the game will likely punish you for that or at least give no gain, they want you to use the rock-paper-scissors system that exists.

However the party stops at 7K rating when AI opponents are disabled and you will start running into polished compositions even if you intentionally don't run such, same is likely even sooner if all your heroes are 30 since level is the primary matchmaking criterion sub-7k. Good luck and let us know how it goes, I am curious too, don't want to rank up just yet want to enjoy the noob zone a bit longer so would love to know if my system works.

Quote from emicampo >>

also the duplicate protection works in a fishy way, always in detriment of the players, as usual with blizzard

for example, i dont have all the epic mercs but i keep receiving stupid epic costumes of mercs that already have instead of a mercs that i dont have, luckily didnt happen to me with legendaries but if i collect coin by coin to purchase a f*****ing pack and i receive a cosmetic legendary instead of a legendary mercs i think i abandon the mode

 I seem to recall they said you can't get skins until you have all the mercs of the same rarity rank. I have so far gotten no skins for Rare mercs and I think I have all but three or so, this is mathematically highly implausible to say the least.

So hopefully it is a bug that gets patched post-haste.

Quote from BYOB >>

If you are playing all modes then you should be generating gold to use correct? That gold doesn't cost anything also correct?. What we choose to do with said free to us gold is entirely up to us correct?

The company in question is in business to make money grow and to pay its employees so they can make new content for people to enjoy correct?

The company in question provides an opportunity for those who do not have money or the ability to provide money to them to continue enjoying their game via game play based rewards. 

You asked what do you guys think? I think this is a fun mode and I disagree with ever single thing you have stated. 

 By playing all three modes I do not generate more gold than someone who plays an equal number of hours of regular Hearthstone. In fact if they mostly play ranked I probably generate a lot less, not even counting how many quests can only be completed there.

So I do not think your line of logic holds. The gold costs directly disincentivize us to play all three modes. A player who buys the Battlegrounds Perks and upgrades their Merc Village will be significantly behind a player who spent it all on HS packs, God help you if you actually bought Merc packs. 

To me it is clear that the gold sunk on Mercs should be possible to regain through Mercs. You can even make it deep inside Merc gameplay so that people can't easily farm extra gold despite not caring for Mercs, say make it the 15th/20th quest Valeera gives or something like that. As things stand now you pretty much gotta pick between Mercs and Hearthstone, or at least suffer a heavy penalty in one or both.

PS. I also now saw that the second Campfire upgrade is 400g, FFS Blizzard.

Anyone else frustrated by this? When I saw it was asking me to do things in game to build buildings I had thought they had listened to the outrage and removed gold costs. But those were just requirements you had to complete to be allowed to pay. That pissed me off extra.

As some have pointed out before it is not cool to have gold costs in a mode that does not provide gold itself. It punishes people who want to play all three modes, isn't that the opposite of what Blizzard should incentivize? 

Finally and most importantly I feel this is just a test to see just how pissed off we are at this. If people only grumble a little and pay then Blizz can take that as a sign that they can put more gold costs in the future. Here you can play these fun new Outland encounters and level to 35 but only if you pay 700g. Don't want to, well you can't complain the matchmaker will put you against other lvl 30 players now shut up. That is why it is critical we are vocally against gold payments at least without additional gold to cover the costs.

And even if this is the only gold cost we ever have to pay it is just kind of pathetic isn't it? Extorting players for what should be basic features and it being a relatively small sum of gold just makes them come off as petty. There is no winning here for Blizzard, except to cut the gold costs. Because of that I won't pay for Heroic Bounties, maybe they make them free in a few weeks.

What do you guys think?

Quote from ArcyroX >>

Quote from PetiteMouche >>

Quote from ArcyroX >>

Is this affecting the normal packs too? Last 8 packs that I opened were nothing but 4 commons and 1 rare.

 Nothing wrong there, you'll get an epic in the next 2 packs

 I guess. But I gotta admit seeing 8 back to back 4c1r was underwhelming

 At least you weren't like me two months ago. I hit the pity timer, or was like 1 pack away from it. Worst luck I ever had in HS but mathematically it was bound to happen eventually I suppose so ehh.

Quote from Banur >>

Quote from Neko_Tamo >>

Hmm not sure anymore, maybe it was soon after release, more likely it was later. But now we have this person who has an issue with Tamsin so seems to point towards a bug. Besides as a grognard I know that in the past finishing things before they are an achievement did not stop you from getting the achi.

Nah, OP doesn't have an issue with Tamsin. He is just asking, if there is an issue instead of wasting time trying to find out the hard way.

I know that some achievements were only added like a week or two after release and while they could check if you got completion, they haven't bothered.

 He doesn't have an issue with Tamsin but that he would ask this in the first place lets me think he's run into this bug before, could also be Rokara and you could be right.

Still hope they fix this soon.

Quote from Banur >>

Quote from Neko_Tamo >>

Quote from akaeskim0 >>

Statement above, dont want to waste time and do it twice.

 I had the same issue when I squared off Rokara. It shows I finished it, that crown above her head, but in the achievements tab it says I didn't.

Been meaning to report the bug for ages but kept putting it off, let me know if you do so I don't have to, or maybe if you want me to back you up on the bug report forums.

Have you redone the adventure? The achievements for some where only added later, so there was nothing when you completed them shortly after release.

 Hmm not sure anymore, maybe it was soon after release, more likely it was later. But now we have this person who has an issue with Tamsin so seems to point towards a bug. Besides as a grognard I know that in the past finishing things before they are an achievement did not stop you from getting the achi.

I feel the deeper issue is power creep, if you keep putting more and more power into the cards for the same cost the game will inevitably get faster or at least more swingy. Probably both, and that is exactly what we see. Broken ass draws, mana cheats or minions are just the symptom, not the disease. In case it isn't clear to you, go play some Classic mode and compare the powerlevel of things there to Standard, or God forbid Wild. I am pretty sure if you put Dr. Boom in Core he would not see much play, and he was the OG WTF broken minion.

Power creep also has the effect of neutering your collection over time meaning you increasingly have less and less value in Wild and even from past expansions of Standard at this point. Makes any kind of long term satisfaction in this game feel like rolling a boulder up a hill. Or paying the boulder to go away. Which is why power creep is a tool, if I can even call it that, that they use. It makes them more money.

It is a big part of why I vowed never to pay money again until they sort this shit out, which they never will. It started with the Wild/Standard split which was basically them admitting that they can't make new cards that are both not OP but also interesting and playable without artificially chopping off a portion of your collection every year. It was a short stroll from there to abusing power creep. Add in some other questionable design choices and lies and this game is now in considerable shit.

Quote from akaeskim0 >>

Statement above, dont want to waste time and do it twice.

 I had the same issue when I squared off Rokara. It shows I finished it, that crown above her head, but in the achievements tab it says I didn't.

Been meaning to report the bug for ages but kept putting it off, let me know if you do so I don't have to, or maybe if you want me to back you up on the bug report forums.

Seems quite monetized but not disgustingly so at first glance but too early to call. I only read the three blogs, didn't watch vids. I don't get gatcha but many people seem to hold them in low regard, if this counts as a gatcha.

I like the notion that you get matched by power primarily, not by MMR, so people who don't invest much time or money into this mode won't just be feed for the sharks. Though that does open the window for newbs being prayed on by smurfs, but they will probably patch that by having them start in wood league, maybe that is already the case. OTOH it probably considers power to just be "hero level, maybe upgrades" not hero rarity, and if legends end up being crucial as they often are in regular HS that can be how they fuck you.

If it is not too onerous to progress without paying through the single player component I will probably be fine with it. Again I think it is best to play it by feel, try it out and see if it works for you.

I will say it is weird that they are adding what are mostly separate games to HS, turning HS itself into just another mode within what used to be its own game.

But I disagree with the argument that this means attention will necessarily be shunted away from HS the cardgame. Like by the logic that money made in one game must go to that game would mean companies could never start a new IP, because it would never get funded with all that money going into the development of the games that earned it in proportion to how much they earned (and salaries/profit ofc). That is clearly silly isn't it.

It is only roughly true because you want to invest more into what brings a better return. The more money a game makes the bigger the odds it will see a lot of content. It is why HS has a bunch of new stuff, why WoW is slowing down, why Starcraft went to sleep and why HotS was put to sleep. As long as regular HS keeps racking in the money it will see a lot of content I think.