Hearthpwn

Quote from LilianVoss >>

Quote from samuellima91 >>

 His request is not ridiculous. Gwent and Legends of Runeterra let you choose the cards you get from packs. Gwent does exactly what he suggests and shows three options you can pick after opening a pack. And Legends of Runeterra has both random champions in capsules and the Wild Card mechanic. Wild Cards are blank cards of any rarity that just let you choose any card of that rarity to add to your collection. Random cards obtained in capsules are occasionally upgraded into Wild Cards. And there are capsules with only Wild Cards in them. It's another way of obtaining cards that complements the usual crafting system. Why Hearthstone has to be so primitive when the competition is only evolving?

So there are alternative card games out there with mechanics that some people find better than what Hearthstone has to offer? Great! But they're not Hearthstone ;) and you do know what I mean by that :)

Will those games affect Hearthstone in some way? I think they already have. You should've seen how scarce rewards were back in 2014. We're getting more free stuff than ever and, besides a few wrong turns here and there, that trend seems to be only positive. Hearthstone is evolving. Could this evolution be faster? Sure. But "gimme more free stuff because others do it" argument is not valid.

What I hold against Hearthstone's monetization system most is that, apart from preorders, no matter what you buy, it always feels like you've got a bad deal out of it. Let's take this new C'thanks bundle or whatever it's being called as an example. 20 bucks (ok, pretty affordable, nice) for 2 latest expansion legendaries (very nice, i want it!) and 20 past expansion packs (what, seriously?). If it was 20 packs from DMF, I would buy it for sure and I'm sure that I'm not the only one who thinks this way. But Blizzard apparently doesn't.

I suspect that the 20 schoolomance packs deal was targeting players who returned for duels and didn't have enough schoolomance cards for treasures.

Quote from DeafKnight >>

But why the hell Hearthstone must mimic paper?

I think discovering epic\legendaries in packs is too much. Discovering legendaries\epics from the rewards track\events may be an interesting option. After all, they have "discovering" for a portrait at level 50 

 Where does "Purism" come into this exactly? It is fairly obvious that the fact that I play Hearthstone proves that I'm not an MtG purist in literaly any form (because purism requires me to only play MtG and nothing else).
And to be honest, why shouldn't it imitate offline versions of effectively the same game (which is basically what Hearthstone is) when it basically imitates everything else? The argument goes both ways. 
Just because it is online doesnt mean it has to be different, the same way as it doesn't mean it can't be different.

And MtG aside (because that is a rather obvious strawman), 

 1) I didn't imply that you are an MTG purists, I said that such notions are understandable on MTG forums but they are quite absurd when discussing the digital-only game.

2) If Hearthstone is an imitation of MTG, then Overwatch is an imitation of Wolfenstein 3D. Where are Nazis? And Starcraft II is an imitation of  Dune 2, where is spice? Hearthstone is not an "imitation", it is a different game of the same genre.

3) If Hearthstone would imitate everything from MTG we would have phases, lands, colors... and WOTC suing Blizzard.

4) No one here offers something to be different to just be different. OPs proposal is to make (in his opinion) the pack opening experience better. I think that it isn't a great suggestion because it will imbalance Hearthstone's economy and Blizzard will just take from other parts of the game. Also, it will make pack opening far less smooth. Denying it because "It is impossible in paper TCGs so we must never do it" is a wrong reason to do it.

Quote from DeafKnight >>

That literally goes against the whole point of finding cards in packs and growing a collection. 
It's supposed to mirror actual card pack buying in real life - you don't get to give rare cards back at the shop when you open an MtG pack and demand a better choice, do you?

I can understand when MTG purists are against anything that differs from paper (in MTG:A)

But why the hell Hearthstone must mimic paper?

I think discovering epic\legendaries in packs is too much. Discovering legendaries\epics from the rewards track\events may be an interesting option. After all, they have "discovering" for a portrait at level 50

Quote from RealShamanistic >>

Looks like Zeddy won huh ? We the players of Hearthstone in an effort to form a more perfect union got Blizzard’s greedy ass to make changes to the Battle Pass system! Thank you Zeddy for your dedication to the game of Hearthstone!!!

 Of course, he won. Look at the sharp increase in views on his youtube channel. BTW, I expect a new video with something like "too little to late, they should apologize, it is still worse than before because of minisets, etc."  Why not? This kind of content sells.

Well, that is a lot of added value. I suspect they'll make events worse than what they planned to compensate but er will never know what was planned.

Quote from PsychicSpade >>

I like it, but for the wrong reason.  The fact that afk battlegrounds is so effective for progression makes this system significantly better for me, though the new system is much worse for an average grinder who doesn't know to abuse battlegrounds (or who plays battlegrounds and cares about their rating).  Having to grind for hours on end for more gold is a huge penalty for arena players (getting 3 wins for 10 gold is no longer an option), and the mini sets are going to make the game even more costly by taking up more resources.  I will admit that the amount of gold the average player receives is on par with the old system, but the new system spaces it out in a significantly worse way.

1) Now they grind for chunks of 100+ gold. What is the major difference here?
2) Now arena games give XP, they didn't provide 10 gold per 3 wins
3) Arena players don't care about the miniset, which is, IMO, the worst part of the system because we need to buy more packs but we don't get more gold.

Arena players are definitely not net negative from that change, the main category of player who got screwed are ones who actively grinded aggro decks.

Quote from Baalrogg >>

For the Redeemed Pariah one, you can also use permanent buff effects on him such as Lance Carrier or Acherus Veteran.  Cards that only give temporary attack buffs such as Dark Iron Dwarf do NOT count, though.

 You can use temporary buffs for this achievement but you need to concede as soon as you get 10 attack.

Quote from Onken >>

Does someone know if I have to complete the achievements before the new expension launches in a few month?

 I think there is no official info on that. Some think that they may remove XP rewards from them but I highly doubt it. Why would they? It is just several levels worth of XP

Quote from CasmX >>

I personally don't have a problem with the new rewards track and until I feel the game can no longer viably support f2p, I'll continue having fun with it.

What I do have a (minor) problem with are the xp achievements. They have a backwards design in the sense that they award the players that need it the least and exclude the players that need it the most. Most of the achievements that award xp require specific cards, quite a few if not most of them being legendary. IMO, the players that have complete or near complete collections that actually can work towards those achievements are the ones that don't really need those tiny xp boosts, where the players that are struggling with their collection that could really benefit from some extra xp can't even try to complete them.

It'd be an easy fix but that's another topic entirely.

And this is a genius way to make people craft cards they don't actually need. Good marketing.

Having a personal rating doesn't necessarily mean that it is a MatchMaking Rating.

Quote from Mackie264 >>

 N'zoth particularly needs taunt minions to revive and then probably a couple strong deathrattle ones to very probably see play

 Good rush minions can work, too. As well as end of turn effects. One more tribe (or two) would help N'zoth, too.

Menagerie is a new archetype Blizzard tries to push. N'zoth may be weak now but you should keep him. He may become payable after post World Championship nerfs, after Darkmoon miniset, after the rotation.

If the bug influenced relatively few people, it is in Blizzard's best interest to overcompensate to make people feel good and forget about how annoyed they were by not getting those quests.

Do they take into account XP from the achievements? someone, who got to 31th level while doing most achievements, and someone, who got to 31th level doing few achievements, have very different XP per day.

Many achievements are very doable in duels even if you don't have the necessary cards. OP already provided an with the totem shaman. While a bad archetype, you will get enough legendary totems from your heropower to get the achievement. But there are more.

Play taunt heavy druids and you will get Greybough in buckets. You can also have tons of solar\lunar eclipses from buckets.

Play menagerie decks and you will get the new N'zoth.

And so on.

PS. The easiest way to get the 3 deathrattle minions with hunter is playing Toxic Reinforcements