Hearthpwn

So I log today, Wed the 15th and about 6:30 ECT and no Nozdormu quest.

Anyone get it normally or did they decide 500 extra XP each month was just too much?

IIRC Blizz mentioned they will make changes that will make it more likely you get matched with people rather than AI in the Fighting Pit, and seems it is here. I personally found the AIs, well, easier and more fun. Players all go for the min-MAX and are rather annoying to play against. And they all seem to have more powerful stuff than me, literally every team I fought had Carine, and one was a full Fire meta team. I run a hodgepodge of guys I got as a casual F2P player. How the hell is this fair. And the AI fights were very chill without being trivial, I quite enjoyed them. And not like you got terribly far with focusing on AI, you could only get 7k rating before being thrust into the grinder against very unequal foes. That is just the 2nd golden chest in terms of rewards. Well I still got it since I was very near when this change hit but in the future things will be less nice.

And now this option is gone, and you get put against players even when it is quite uneven. I ran a lvl30x5 + 1 low lvl teams to target AI. So I can easily see if my opponent is as good as me or not, my Gul'dan was like lvl 15 and their low lvl merc was 24, that is quite uneven. Which shows this new matchmaker gives you human opponents quickly by sacrificing any pretense at a fair match. I really hope they revert this change.

Sees he got a pack with two epics :D

One of the epics is a Brightwing skin D:

Imo they really need to stop this shit of getting skins before you have all the mercs of that rarity. It feels really crummy. At least my other card was Geddon.

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 ;)

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.

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.

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.

I lost my weekly quest "Deal 1500 damage in Battlegrounds" after update. No different quest or XP compensation, simply quest gone and that's it. Small indie company...

Notice how adventures that were purchasable with gold, are not ANYMORE!

because $$$$

RIP BG, was fun while it lasted.

Why they couldnt add 3rd and 4th slots open as later prizes in free battlepass and get instantly from paid battlepass?

The thing is Blizzard does this on purpose. That rewards track gave terrible rewards - on purpose - so that if people complain, they'll "buff" it and make themselves look like the good guy. On the occasion that players *don't* complain (enough), they'll keep those terrible rewards and get away with their greed. If anything, it screws over players for a long while before anything is actually changed.

Yep. I agree.

My understanding is that Blizzard needs to cash in a lot in order to increase the stock's value in order to complete the acquisition from Microsoft. Because the FTC might stop it. This also explains that abomination of Diablo Immortal. 

Anyway, they are simply killing the company. Time is ended, Blizzard. 

Quote from Werburgsam >>

The sole purpose of such currencies is to obfuscate how much money you really spend... Not a fan.

 That and make it so you can't spend exactly what you want to.

The sole purpose of such currencies is to obfuscate how much money you really spend... Not a fan.