The game algorithm matches you with a hard opponent depending on your deck and other things.
I just confirmed today that this algorithm is super rigged, unfair and unfunny.
If I use slow warlock quest I got matched with quest mage 99% of the time. Then I make a paladin deck that counters that deck AND ALMOST ZERO mages.....and if its a mage, its NEVER quest.
I change to warlock..same thing again..quest mage.
Theres no reason to play a game where all this is manipulated like gambling in a casino.
I play since beta...and at those times opponents were RANDOM.
Not now....everything is MANIPULATED somehow...packs...adventures...matches....I have lost the interest to play.
So if you think this is rigged against you, then what about your opponents? Were they rigged into good matchups? If so, they weren't rigged into hard matchups. What you're describing isn't the same rules for everyone.
A conspiracy theory really isn't a conspiracy theory without the benefactors of said rigging. So who are these opponents of yours getting these free wins? Bots programmed by Blizzard employees? Actual human Blizzard employees piloting the decks? People who spend more money on the game than you do? Lizard people? Zionists? I'm genuinely curious who you plan on scapegoating your ineptitude upon.
It's already been explained multiple times that the RNG rigging will favor you to end a long losing streak and go against you when you hit a progress gate (like legend). Either you are not reading the thread or are being willfully obtuse.
Here is something you can do to test one of the mechanics I believe exists. This is what I refer to as the 'golden' RNG, Don't play constructed for a week, then play something powerful with an easy curve (like taunt druid), bet you go on a nice little win streak. This game state seems to be triggered by not playing for a while, as a way of hooking players back in to the game.
Another one that most players are familiar with are the progress gates. Like at diamond 10, diamond 5 and legend. Don't be surprised if you get terrible RNG consistently that drives you back from breaking through. This type of thing was first publicly observed in the game Candy Crush. The game would stick players on levels so they would buy powerups to break through.....who owns king? Activision. Activision thought so highly of King's manipulative tactics, that they went out and acquired them. But watch people on this site scream up and down that Activision would never do something like that in hearthstone.
This post is all the proof you need to show that these dudes know exactly nothing about probability. Seriously, this might be the most laughably asinine idea for data collection I've ever seen on this forum. "Play a few games and see if you go on a winning streak." Don't look at the vast data collected by numerous sites: go with your hunch.
No, no, no. Don't you understand? You see, if you let people decide for themselves whether they play a game, they might make the wrong choice. I know what you're saying: it's just a tiny choice over a video game. But that's how these things start. One day, some innocent (and obviously misguided) player wrongly decides that he should play Mercs. He starts f2p, but he decides (wrongly, you understand) to spend a modest amount of money on said game. You see, he made the mistake of actually liking it. The next thing you know, he's making bad decision left and right. He drops out of school, develops a meth addiction, loses all his friends, marries another addict, has a daughter who ends up on the pole, and ultimately dies of a tragic overdose. All because of Blizzard's greedy idea of offering another HS-related product to its customers. Hell, the devs might as well have put a gun to this dude's head and pulled the trigger themselves: that's how responsible they are.
[/sarcasm]
Some people are utterly incapable of understanding that reasonable, intelligent people can have different values, priorities, and preferences.
Nobody is forcing you to buy cosmetics. They have absolutely no impact on gameplay. There's no need to screech about it every time they release some new ones :)
For me personally, I don't own any cosmetics and I hardly spend any money on the game (just 15 packs with real money per expansion) but it makes no difference to me if other people want to do so. Do you guys really prefer when the only thing on the shop was packs?
Not to put words in his mouth, but that's exactly what OP is saying. He's criticizing those who complain that "Blizzard is, like, you know, like selling stuff again. SCAM! GREED!" Complaining about something that is entirely optional and has no impact on gameplay is, well, nuts.
Scratching my head on the Mindrender Illucia nerf. The dev notes say that it was originally designed as a "late game disruption tool" but was being abused as an aggro card. Since it is no longer able to disrupt your opponent and is unlikely to be very helpful in aggro, what possible purpose does this card serve?
Very glad to see The Demon Seed banned from Wild. Maybe we'll get a healthier meta there as a result.
Yeah I don't have to buy it, but they didn't have to sell it either.
If Blizzard wasn't going to sell it, why on earth would it develop the mode? Companies aren't charities: they create new products to earn a return on their investment.
It looks like a game from the '90s which cost 130€.
Do you guys have money?
It's free; it costs 0.
Optional bundles that give you nothing special that you can't get for free by playing. It's just a small boost to save a little time while supporting the company if you so desire.
I don't understand this "free idea". It is not free. It is only theoretically free but if they released a 130€ pre-purchase it means that you need a lot of money if you want to be competitive.
Are the free-to-play games on the mobile free? Most of the time no. They are theoretically free, then if you want indeed to play it, it is most expensive than a triple-A game that you can purchase.
So it is not free. It is a pay-to win-game very costly.
Or at least, like now, it is what it seems to me.
It does not necessarily mean that you must pay to be competitive: if this mode is like many, many of the better f2p games, the stuff you can purchase essentially saves you time. You can either pay nothing, play a lot and slowly accumulate stuff, or you can pay for this stuff and get it right away. In that respect, it's a lot like HS itself: you can either pay to get all the cards you want, or you can play a lot and buy/ craft the cards with gold/ dust.
Given that Mercenaries appears to be primarily a PvE experience, what that means is that it will likely take the average f2p player longer to beat certain bosses/ complete certain tasks than someone who's got better characters and equipment. But if you're having fun, who cares? Now, if there winds up being a "wall" that f2p players can't get past (either because Blizzard did so deliberately or because of poor playtesting), Blizzard will have to either fix that problem or watch an awful lot of people quit the mode because they were mislead. Games that have those sleazy walls have a very high rate of people quitting.
As for the PvP part, since Blizzard is using something akin to the MMR system to ensure that you're not matched against someone with vastly better characters and equipment, being f2p is unlikely to make PvP frustrating. Sure, if there's something like the Arena Leaderboard, you're not going to see many f2p players there, but who cares?
Obviously, neither of us knows for sure what the mode will really end up being. My point is that there simply is not enough evidence to be able to say that Mercenaries will be p2w.
[…] nor do you need to play HS to advance in Mercenaries.
There are many, many alcoholics in this world (including a good friend of mine). Do you denounce your local brewery when it creates a new beer?
I think I read that there is some interaction with the gold, so completing quests would improve your village or something.
It’s not the creation of a new beer, that’s the issue (at least for me). It’s that they go “preorder our new thing today and get this six pack!”. That’s what I feel they are offering to the HS alcoholics, who then can’t refuse as that would mean losing out on ‘free’ beer.
I think (and could be wrong) that those quests are internal to Mercenaries. So, doing certain things in that mode (say, "defeat 10 bosses") will earn you Mercenary coins, etc. which you can use to upgrade your village. Now, I'm sure you can use gold you've earned in HS to do so as well, but you're not required to. I do expect, however, for there to be quests in HS that relate to Mercenaries (just like there are some that relate to BG). I can see a 1750 xp quest, for example, that says "upgrade one Mercenary." But since those quests are re-rollable, I don't see a problem with that.
As for your latter discussion, I'd reply by saying it's more like a brewery saying, "Pre-order a 6-pack of our beer today." If you really like the brewery, you might take the chance and do so. I'm more of the mind to say, "Let me try it first." But, again, people need to decide for themselves what they want to spend their money on. And "HS alcoholics" (great phrase!) are going to spend money regardless of whether Mercenaries exists or not. Those people, if they cannot afford to buy all that stuff, need to take personal responsibility and seek help.
So you think think they are smart to try to extract more and more cash from a declining player base?
Your question makes no sense. It isn't "extracting" anything. It's offering a product on the open market. If you like the product and think that the price is right, you buy it. If not, you don't. This product is no different from the red velvet Oreo I discussed above. Some love it, I think it's gross. To each his own.
Stop making sense. Didn't you know that any time a company creates a new product and tries to sell it, they're really a) trying to screw the little guy; b) charging too much; and c) only doing this because the company is on the brink of collapse? I mean, who knows more about running a business: the actual managers of the firm or a bunch of random dudes posting on a game site?
You guys both act and speak so innocently like Blizzard isn't a shady or corrupt company AT ALL, it's kinda funny. Poor Blizzard is only trying to sell worthy products ! Also you're a random dude like anyone else here, so based on that information we shouldn't take what you say seriously is that correct ?
Of course blizzard knows about business, that's the whole point, the more you know about business, the more awful you get, generally.
I never said anything about whether or not Blizzard is a "shady" company or not. Nor does that determination matter in this case. The company has created a new product, one which you can choose to play or not play. If you do choose to play it, you can pay for goodies or not. If you are not capable of controlling yourself in this matter, it is your responsibility to seek professional help.
It may end up being like BG: some people love it, some (like me) think it's moronic. I have no problem with people enjoying that mode. Unfortunately, there's a small but growing collection of nutjobs in this world who believe that if THEY think something is a problem, then EVERYONE must think the same and that people who disagrees with them are evil. That's fundamentally undemocratic and dangerous.
Blizzard: "Here's a new toy for free. You don't have to play with it, but if you want to, we can enhance your experience if you pay us."
Community: "How dare they do this to us!? Hearthstone is ruined! Sham of a company! I only want a full and complete game for free!!"
Did I get that right? Just play it if you want to, and if you like it, spend money on it. If not, don't play/buy anything.
When BGs came out, I tried it a bit, didn't really find it that fun, so stopped playing it. Then when they released the cosmetics recently, I didn't take to the forums to complain about how Blizzard is so greedy for trying to make money off of it. Just let people who like it, enjoy it.
Also, I've played plenty of gacha games and never spent a penny on them. No matter how many times they give you that splash screen with all the cRaZy dEaLs!!! They usually give you plenty of free summons or whatever during your playthrough to enjoy the game. And if you really hit a brick wall and have to pay to continue playing... well, that game gets uninstalled and forgotten.
The thing here is that mercenaries has not replaced regular Hearthstone, it is simply an add-on mode. It's not a problem at all.
Stop making sense. Didn't you know that any time a company creates a new product and tries to sell it, they're really a) trying to screw the little guy; b) charging too much; and c) only doing this because the company is on the brink of collapse? I mean, who knows more about running a business: the actual managers of the firm or a bunch of random dudes posting on a game site?
yeah, those guys really know how to run a business, like supporting chinese tyranny and protecting scumbags who abuse women. We should trust them unquestioningly right?
Where did I say we should trust them unquestioningly? Here's a hint: nowhere. My point is that it appears this new mode is entirely separate from HS. You can, if you choose, pay to advance more quickly or you can (it appears) play it for free. You do not need to play Mercenaries to advance in HS, nor do you need to play HS to advance in Mercenaries. Therefore, the creation of this mode does not increase the cost of playing HS. So there's nothing for a standard HS player to complain about.
To use a simple analogy: I love standard, classic Oreos. Over the years, Nabisco has created all sorts of odd Oreo flavors (red velvet, mint, etc.) that I don't buy. Do I care? No. If other people like these flavors, they should buy them. But it doesn't affect me in the least. In fact, if it makes the company more profitable, that's a good thing. Yet for reasons which escape a normal human being, there's a sizable number of people on this forum who think that any time a company (Blizzard or another) creates a new product to sell, there's something evil/ wrong/ sleazy about that. There isn't. If companies never created new products, the world would be in much worse shape.
Nor should the fact that a small number of people with a gaming compulsion might "get hooked" on Mercenaries change the calculations. There are many, many alcoholics in this world (including a good friend of mine). Do you denounce your local brewery when it creates a new beer because "if this new beer is good, it's going to encourage people to drink it. Some of those people will get hooked."? Of course not (unless you're completely insane). The same reasoning applies here: if these people do have a problem, it is their responsibility to seek help. It is not Blizzard's responsibility to cater to this very, very small segment of the population at the expense of the vast majority of its customers.
As for your little cheap shots at the end, believe me when I say that there is probably no one on this forum more revolted than me by the CCP and its incredible brutality. I hate the fact that companies are doing business with those scumbags and I hope that, one day, all these companies (including Blizzard) wake up and realize what a terrible idea it is to be in bed with those monsters. Same goes for their treatment of women at the company. My point was that the "analysis" of some random dudes on the internet saying "it's a terrible idea, no one is going to play it, it costs too much" etc. doesn't amount to much. I'm pretty sure Blizzard would not have invested all the time and money it did to create this game if it wasn't very confident that it could make money on it. The company should no more take advice from those dudes than it should from me.
Blizzard: "Here's a new toy for free. You don't have to play with it, but if you want to, we can enhance your experience if you pay us."
Community: "How dare they do this to us!? Hearthstone is ruined! Sham of a company! I only want a full and complete game for free!!"
Did I get that right? Just play it if you want to, and if you like it, spend money on it. If not, don't play/buy anything.
When BGs came out, I tried it a bit, didn't really find it that fun, so stopped playing it. Then when they released the cosmetics recently, I didn't take to the forums to complain about how Blizzard is so greedy for trying to make money off of it. Just let people who like it, enjoy it.
Also, I've played plenty of gacha games and never spent a penny on them. No matter how many times they give you that splash screen with all the cRaZy dEaLs!!! They usually give you plenty of free summons or whatever during your playthrough to enjoy the game. And if you really hit a brick wall and have to pay to continue playing... well, that game gets uninstalled and forgotten.
The thing here is that mercenaries has not replaced regular Hearthstone, it is simply an add-on mode. It's not a problem at all.
Stop making sense. Didn't you know that any time a company creates a new product and tries to sell it, they're really a) trying to screw the little guy; b) charging too much; and c) only doing this because the company is on the brink of collapse? I mean, who knows more about running a business: the actual managers of the firm or a bunch of random dudes posting on a game site?
Kudos on a really fun deck. I miss the old Dragon Priest decks and had been kicking around trying to build a questline deck based on it. You beat me to it and did a great job.
Quests should be free, not take up a card slot and both players should start with 3 crystals, like battlegrounds. Nobody wants games to last more than four turns.
Great idea!!!! While we're at it, let's just let the computer build our decks, play our cards, hell even craft new cards for us. Hearthstone idle, here we come!!
For those of us with an attention span longer than 2 minutes, a 4 turn game sounds like torture. A sizable portion of the HS community (myself included) considers battlegrounds to be Hearthstone for Dummies.
You people are so quick to throw your witty comments at others, is not it quite obvious his remark was sarcastic?
Quests should be free, not take up a card slot and both players should start with 3 crystals, like battlegrounds. Nobody wants games to last more than four turns.
Great idea!!!! While we're at it, let's just let the computer build our decks, play our cards, hell even craft new cards for us. Hearthstone idle, here we come!!
For those of us with an attention span longer than 2 minutes, a 4 turn game sounds like torture. A sizable portion of the HS community (myself included) considers battlegrounds to be Hearthstone for Dummies.
0
A claim for which you have exactly zero evidence.
3
This post is all the proof you need to show that these dudes know exactly nothing about probability. Seriously, this might be the most laughably asinine idea for data collection I've ever seen on this forum. "Play a few games and see if you go on a winning streak." Don't look at the vast data collected by numerous sites: go with your hunch.
0
No, no, no. Don't you understand? You see, if you let people decide for themselves whether they play a game, they might make the wrong choice. I know what you're saying: it's just a tiny choice over a video game. But that's how these things start. One day, some innocent (and obviously misguided) player wrongly decides that he should play Mercs. He starts f2p, but he decides (wrongly, you understand) to spend a modest amount of money on said game. You see, he made the mistake of actually liking it. The next thing you know, he's making bad decision left and right. He drops out of school, develops a meth addiction, loses all his friends, marries another addict, has a daughter who ends up on the pole, and ultimately dies of a tragic overdose. All because of Blizzard's greedy idea of offering another HS-related product to its customers. Hell, the devs might as well have put a gun to this dude's head and pulled the trigger themselves: that's how responsible they are.
[/sarcasm]
Some people are utterly incapable of understanding that reasonable, intelligent people can have different values, priorities, and preferences.
1
Not to put words in his mouth, but that's exactly what OP is saying. He's criticizing those who complain that "Blizzard is, like, you know, like selling stuff again. SCAM! GREED!" Complaining about something that is entirely optional and has no impact on gameplay is, well, nuts.
2
Scratching my head on the Mindrender Illucia nerf. The dev notes say that it was originally designed as a "late game disruption tool" but was being abused as an aggro card. Since it is no longer able to disrupt your opponent and is unlikely to be very helpful in aggro, what possible purpose does this card serve?
Very glad to see The Demon Seed banned from Wild. Maybe we'll get a healthier meta there as a result.
2
If Blizzard wasn't going to sell it, why on earth would it develop the mode? Companies aren't charities: they create new products to earn a return on their investment.
1
It does not necessarily mean that you must pay to be competitive: if this mode is like many, many of the better f2p games, the stuff you can purchase essentially saves you time. You can either pay nothing, play a lot and slowly accumulate stuff, or you can pay for this stuff and get it right away. In that respect, it's a lot like HS itself: you can either pay to get all the cards you want, or you can play a lot and buy/ craft the cards with gold/ dust.
Given that Mercenaries appears to be primarily a PvE experience, what that means is that it will likely take the average f2p player longer to beat certain bosses/ complete certain tasks than someone who's got better characters and equipment. But if you're having fun, who cares? Now, if there winds up being a "wall" that f2p players can't get past (either because Blizzard did so deliberately or because of poor playtesting), Blizzard will have to either fix that problem or watch an awful lot of people quit the mode because they were mislead. Games that have those sleazy walls have a very high rate of people quitting.
As for the PvP part, since Blizzard is using something akin to the MMR system to ensure that you're not matched against someone with vastly better characters and equipment, being f2p is unlikely to make PvP frustrating. Sure, if there's something like the Arena Leaderboard, you're not going to see many f2p players there, but who cares?
Obviously, neither of us knows for sure what the mode will really end up being. My point is that there simply is not enough evidence to be able to say that Mercenaries will be p2w.
0
I think (and could be wrong) that those quests are internal to Mercenaries. So, doing certain things in that mode (say, "defeat 10 bosses") will earn you Mercenary coins, etc. which you can use to upgrade your village. Now, I'm sure you can use gold you've earned in HS to do so as well, but you're not required to. I do expect, however, for there to be quests in HS that relate to Mercenaries (just like there are some that relate to BG). I can see a 1750 xp quest, for example, that says "upgrade one Mercenary." But since those quests are re-rollable, I don't see a problem with that.
As for your latter discussion, I'd reply by saying it's more like a brewery saying, "Pre-order a 6-pack of our beer today." If you really like the brewery, you might take the chance and do so. I'm more of the mind to say, "Let me try it first." But, again, people need to decide for themselves what they want to spend their money on. And "HS alcoholics" (great phrase!) are going to spend money regardless of whether Mercenaries exists or not. Those people, if they cannot afford to buy all that stuff, need to take personal responsibility and seek help.
1
Your question makes no sense. It isn't "extracting" anything. It's offering a product on the open market. If you like the product and think that the price is right, you buy it. If not, you don't. This product is no different from the red velvet Oreo I discussed above. Some love it, I think it's gross. To each his own.
2
I never said anything about whether or not Blizzard is a "shady" company or not. Nor does that determination matter in this case. The company has created a new product, one which you can choose to play or not play. If you do choose to play it, you can pay for goodies or not. If you are not capable of controlling yourself in this matter, it is your responsibility to seek professional help.
It may end up being like BG: some people love it, some (like me) think it's moronic. I have no problem with people enjoying that mode. Unfortunately, there's a small but growing collection of nutjobs in this world who believe that if THEY think something is a problem, then EVERYONE must think the same and that people who disagrees with them are evil. That's fundamentally undemocratic and dangerous.
1
Where did I say we should trust them unquestioningly? Here's a hint: nowhere. My point is that it appears this new mode is entirely separate from HS. You can, if you choose, pay to advance more quickly or you can (it appears) play it for free. You do not need to play Mercenaries to advance in HS, nor do you need to play HS to advance in Mercenaries. Therefore, the creation of this mode does not increase the cost of playing HS. So there's nothing for a standard HS player to complain about.
To use a simple analogy: I love standard, classic Oreos. Over the years, Nabisco has created all sorts of odd Oreo flavors (red velvet, mint, etc.) that I don't buy. Do I care? No. If other people like these flavors, they should buy them. But it doesn't affect me in the least. In fact, if it makes the company more profitable, that's a good thing. Yet for reasons which escape a normal human being, there's a sizable number of people on this forum who think that any time a company (Blizzard or another) creates a new product to sell, there's something evil/ wrong/ sleazy about that. There isn't. If companies never created new products, the world would be in much worse shape.
Nor should the fact that a small number of people with a gaming compulsion might "get hooked" on Mercenaries change the calculations. There are many, many alcoholics in this world (including a good friend of mine). Do you denounce your local brewery when it creates a new beer because "if this new beer is good, it's going to encourage people to drink it. Some of those people will get hooked."? Of course not (unless you're completely insane). The same reasoning applies here: if these people do have a problem, it is their responsibility to seek help. It is not Blizzard's responsibility to cater to this very, very small segment of the population at the expense of the vast majority of its customers.
As for your little cheap shots at the end, believe me when I say that there is probably no one on this forum more revolted than me by the CCP and its incredible brutality. I hate the fact that companies are doing business with those scumbags and I hope that, one day, all these companies (including Blizzard) wake up and realize what a terrible idea it is to be in bed with those monsters. Same goes for their treatment of women at the company. My point was that the "analysis" of some random dudes on the internet saying "it's a terrible idea, no one is going to play it, it costs too much" etc. doesn't amount to much. I'm pretty sure Blizzard would not have invested all the time and money it did to create this game if it wasn't very confident that it could make money on it. The company should no more take advice from those dudes than it should from me.
3
Stop making sense. Didn't you know that any time a company creates a new product and tries to sell it, they're really a) trying to screw the little guy; b) charging too much; and c) only doing this because the company is on the brink of collapse? I mean, who knows more about running a business: the actual managers of the firm or a bunch of random dudes posting on a game site?
0
Kudos on a really fun deck. I miss the old Dragon Priest decks and had been kicking around trying to build a questline deck based on it. You beat me to it and did a great job.
I dropped G'huun the Blood God (don't have) and The Curator (I always seem to have a pretty full hand and playing it tended to overdraw me), replaced them with Soul Mirror and Plagued Protodrake. Works pretty well.
0
As was mine.
2
Great idea!!!! While we're at it, let's just let the computer build our decks, play our cards, hell even craft new cards for us. Hearthstone idle, here we come!!
For those of us with an attention span longer than 2 minutes, a 4 turn game sounds like torture. A sizable portion of the HS community (myself included) considers battlegrounds to be Hearthstone for Dummies.