Ostkaka and Powder Leave Alliance, Rethinking Their Hearthstone Involvement
Hearthstone pros Sebastian "Ostkaka" Engwall and Harald "Powder" Gimre are taking a break from the game and have left their team for the past year, Alliance. Both players are taking a break and are going to rethink their involvement in the game. Reasons cited for their breaks include the way the Hearthstone Championship Tour was structured and being unable to find the passion to grind. Good luck out there Ostkaka and Powder!
In what ways do you get tired of Hearthstone? What do you think Blizzard could do to improve fatigue?
You can view the press release here, or down below.
Quote from AllianceGothenburg, Sweden – December 18th, 2017 – Going into 2018 Alliance is sad to say farewell to two of our Hearthstone players, Sebastian “Ostkaka” Engwall and Harald “Powder” Gimre. Both Sebastian and Harald have decided to take a break from playing Hearthstone professionally for the near future.
After our venture into Hearthstone in 2016 with Jon “Orange” Westberg we followed it up by signing Sebastian and Harald at the end of that year. Subsequently all three of them competed together in ESL’s Trinity Series (don’t mention the murlocs please) as well as recently coming back from China after placing 4th in the Gold Club World Championship.
Alliance COO, Erik Barge had the following to say as Alliance parts with Sebastian and Harald: “We here at Alliance have thoroughly enjoyed having Sebastian and Harald on the team for the past year. Both of them are stellar competitors and I will definitely miss having them on the team. With that said I completely respect their decision to take a break and wish them the best of luck in the future, whether it is in Hearthstone or outside of it.”
Ostkaka:
“In the past few months I have taken a step back from the Hearthstone grind, I have not had the passion to stream or ladder for hours every day. I do still enjoy competing and I will see how I feel in 2018 with the new HCT tour but for now I am taking a break and re-evaluating. Alliance has been a great team to be a part of and I am thankful for their support during my time with them.”
Powder:
“It has been a great experience with Alliance over the past year, unfortunately with the way the HCT system was structured I could not really find the passion to grind and stream over the last few months. I have decided to focus more on my life outside of Hearthstone and I will be going back to studying. I hope all the best for Alliance in the future and as for what I will be doing with Hearthstone next year I am not sure, but I still love competing and I might try to get back to the grind when the new season starts.”
Alliance wish Sebastian and Harald best of luck in their future endeavours. Next up for Alliance Hearthstone will be in January where Jon is competing in the HCT World Championship in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
I think certain aspects of the game are good right, but what I think really hurts it, is the absolute power of RNG right now. I don't mean just random effects, but look at it this way, the difference between drawing Prince K for turn 2 or not drawing him is big, you essentially warp the game based on the RNG of draws with that one card. Add to that the RNG of drawing Patches versus Captain first, and it stacks even higher.
This isn't limited to aggro, as Warlock changes a lot based on if it draws Lackey before it draws Voidlord for example. While decks with Spiteful Summoner are also doing well now, but they have this huge spread of which order you draw things in... Not to mention the 7 mana 5/5, drawing that at the right time is huge too as it's just a 7 mana 5/5 unless you've held it for some time. Anduin Combo too, was Raza/Anduin in your last 10 cards or did you get it early? How about Quest Mage builds, did you get unlucky with where Antonidas ended up in your deck?
It's just not a good place to be, when based on when you draw a couple of cards, in some cases one card, it completely warps how the game is played in terms of power level. Think about it, in Prince K mirrors, based on a single draw in the first two turns of the game, you can end up playing a strictly worse deck somehow, despite playing all the same cards.
I get where you are coming from, but things like drawing lackey after Voidlord is simply normal card game draw rng affecting tutor-like minions. You would get that in any card game. It is just a standard drawback of using tutors to draw (no pun intended) a more powerful thing out.
Same thing goes things like Anduin & Antonidas. Getting them late and losing is something typical of any combo or OTK/TTK deck. I don't really view it as something that HS suddenly stumbled upon the last expansion or two.
Don't forget "Did you draw Barnes before turn 4? If so, you win"
I would absolutely love to see a non evergreen mode. I know this is not for new players at all since it doesn’t include the basic cards you get for free but it would be a separate player pool like standard and wild and brawl etc.
Also if they plan to keep the evergreen set in play forever they need to give an option to buy a bulk of it. Not every legendary in the set or anything but a solid chunk of the most utilized commons, rares, epics, and a few neutral legendaries. Things like Savannah Highmane for Hunter and brawl for warrior. Make them non disenchantable so people aren’t just using it to buy essentially. I think this would massively help the new player experience or even the player who’s been playing for a couple expansion.
From one point: if you are E-Sport professional, you sure must aim for something better than considerably random-based grindy game.
From other point: you are professional in random-based grindy game - will you find your skills and spot in different kind of games ?
Stop printing two Legendaries for each class every goddamn expansion. As a F2P player who has played frequently since BrM (and I had played for a while before Naxx), I can say I haven't been able to play half the classes in the game for about a year now, and decks just keep getting more and more expensive. You can't even afford to try new stuff out when an expansion hits 'cus if it does not prove broken enough your dust was basically wasted.
As a F2P player myself I have to ask why you are trying to craft that many decks. It is much more efficient to focus on 2-3 decks that you can craft everything for than to try and make a deck for every new class full of all of the new stuff.
Heck, many of the new legendaries aren't even crucial for the class atm (such as Dragon Soul).
Which is exactly what I do, but I also like to experiment with new ideas and a while ago I thought I was finally able to do that, given the state of my collection and my dust supply of over two years of grinding, but after this year I'm not so sure anymore.
I mean, I'm not claiming I have some kind of right to complain; I haven't paid and I won't pay a single penny to play this game ever. I'm just pointing out how unsustainable this model is. I never recommend the game for my friends (I actually advise against starting to play it) and I don't think the player base is growing as much as it used to (I'm not gonna look for statistics; I might as well be wrong, who knows).
I don't expect being able to play with every class at the same given point in time. I try to stay competitive even when playing with my more meme-y brews. I just don't feel the time I've spent and continue to spend in this game does not bring me satisfactory rewards, and I'm pretty sure a lot of people feel the same.
Achievements. Regularly updated.
Fatigued of ranked and arena? How about trying to do that crazy achievement? Sounds fun. That's what a lot of people in WoW actually do. It adds tons of game hours.
As a big fan of achievements in WoW I'd be down for this.
What really kills it for me is that the Developers won't take any risks. We are still waiting for any new class :( and I still don't get why they wont release one, its just a game after all, a game they should know how to make.
Without something NEW like a new class the game just has been getting boring, with every expansion releasing a couple of new card mechanics but that's it. They need to change the game up a little more than that because their expansions have been peaking my interest less and less..
You don't see Magic the Gathering adding a 6th color do you?
You have heard of the Death Knight class right?
Or the Monk, or even the Demon Hunter...
You may not realise but Hearthstone is actually based off of the Game World of Warcraft, and Warcraft, which contain classes that have not yet reached the game
My point is the game will get stale if the developers don't make any bold moves... Honestly my suggestion isn't as ridiculous as you propose it is a much asked feature actually...
They're NEVER going to release any new classes, nor should they. Give it up - it's the most tired and pointless request ever.