figmentPez
Staff member
"You can complete quests by challenging a friend this week."
Good to see this back.
Good to see this back.
[PC Game] Hearthstone (Practically Beta)
- Thread starter Ravenpoe
- Start date
This is another fun brawl, but I feel like some people are struggling. It kind of necessitates a creative approach. I battled a shaman who tried to do the current shaman aggro deck, not understanding how the randomness factor was going to screw with any typical net-deck. In a weird brawl, you gotta build something to suit the rules. I loaded my deck with low-cost minions and some spell synergy ones, then a few higher-ups just to make sure I got strong spells later. It's been working out pretty well.
Also, we'll get more can't-drop spots on the ladder besides just 20, at 15, 10, and 5. Hopefully next month will go better, though I expect now Jade Druid will become the dominant deck type. Right now I can hardly even play a casual match without it raining pirates.
figmentPez
Staff member
Most 1 drops that actually see play can trade with a 2 drop (2/1 is the average 1, 3/2 is the average 2) so it being able to trade with a low strength 3 drop if a certain condition is met isn't as bad. The 2 health was really the biggest problem, it's very hard to deal with on turn 1. Overall I think these changes are fine.
figmentPez
Staff member
But no one plays 1 mana 2/1s, that's why 2 mana 3/2s are popular. If the lil' shit pirate didn't have 3 attack, then a 2 mana 2/3 could counter it, and it wouldn't be such a necessity to completely remove it.
It having 1 health means it will be opposed by ping classes, so it'll probably go away outside of niche decks or super aggro
Blood mage brawl 
A bunch of classic cards are being retired this season.
http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/blog/20475356
Also notable
We wanted to allow players to disenchant Classic cards that are being added to the Hall of Fame set for full dust refunds, but then felt that incentivizing players to dust their cool Wild cards was counter to our goal of making Wild awesome.
So instead, we're just going to give you the dust, and you can keep the cards!
Up to the maximum number of cards you could put in a deck, we will give you the full dust value of any cards you have that are being added to the Hall of Fame set. (Yes, that means if you have at least one Golden Ragnaros, you'll get 3200 dust!) The dust will be automatically awarded upon log-in once the Year of the Mammoth begins.
http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/blog/20475356
Also notable
We wanted to allow players to disenchant Classic cards that are being added to the Hall of Fame set for full dust refunds, but then felt that incentivizing players to dust their cool Wild cards was counter to our goal of making Wild awesome.
So instead, we're just going to give you the dust, and you can keep the cards!
Up to the maximum number of cards you could put in a deck, we will give you the full dust value of any cards you have that are being added to the Hall of Fame set. (Yes, that means if you have at least one Golden Ragnaros, you'll get 3200 dust!) The dust will be automatically awarded upon log-in once the Year of the Mammoth begins.
I was expecting Sylvanas, Azure Drake and Ragnaros to go to wild.
I was not expecting power overwhelming, conceal and ice lance.
I would say rip miracle rogue, but my miracle deck already doesn't run conceal. The loss of the warlock combo will hurt, but I guess we'll just be forced to think of other ways to win. And with Reno Jackson leaving standard, I doubt the current combo renolock would be viable anyway.
I was not expecting power overwhelming, conceal and ice lance.
I would say rip miracle rogue, but my miracle deck already doesn't run conceal. The loss of the warlock combo will hurt, but I guess we'll just be forced to think of other ways to win. And with Reno Jackson leaving standard, I doubt the current combo renolock would be viable anyway.
It said they're being moved to the hall of fame set, and will no longer be a part of the classic set, so no, they shouldn't show up in packs. It is impossible to buy packs that include wild cards, they have to be crafted.
I foresee glitches in the future.
My first guess as to what would be tossed was Azure Drake, and yup, there it is. I'm okay with it for that reasoning, but I only just got Sylvanas, so I'm kind of bummed she's leaving standard. I'll just have to make use of her more for the time being.
ALSO interesting, three expansions per year, with adventure quests teamed up to them. The example they gave was actually what I thought of when I got back into Hearthstone. A Mean Streets adventure would've been interesting. Having this steady an influx of cards into standard will be good with so many leaving, especially since they'll be doing that yearly, but I feel like it might be hard to keep up with if you're free to play.
New Rogue hero just for getting 10 wins post-expansion release, nice.
Lots of rewards leading up to the release.
Now all we need is a date when all this shit's going down. I'm guessing end of March/beginning of April.
My first guess as to what would be tossed was Azure Drake, and yup, there it is. I'm okay with it for that reasoning, but I only just got Sylvanas, so I'm kind of bummed she's leaving standard. I'll just have to make use of her more for the time being.
ALSO interesting, three expansions per year, with adventure quests teamed up to them. The example they gave was actually what I thought of when I got back into Hearthstone. A Mean Streets adventure would've been interesting. Having this steady an influx of cards into standard will be good with so many leaving, especially since they'll be doing that yearly, but I feel like it might be hard to keep up with if you're free to play.
New Rogue hero just for getting 10 wins post-expansion release, nice.
Lots of rewards leading up to the release.
Now all we need is a date when all this shit's going down. I'm guessing end of March/beginning of April.
Well, if your craft them now, you'll get your dust back when the next set comes out
Don't have enough dust atm. I think I only have about 950.
Mostly annoyed because my last crafted legendary was a choice between Dr. Boom and Ragnaros, and only didn't craft Ragnaros because I assumed I would someday eventually get him in one of my Brawl packs or something.
--Patrick
You'll still have the chance before the new season starts to get it in the packs.
It also occurred to me that I can craft any those commons I'm missing…and then get a full refund shortly thereafter.
--Patrick
figmentPez
Staff member
I'm bummed that there aren't going to be any more adventures. Those are my favorite part of Hearthstone, both because I love playing adventure content, but because I like being guaranteed to get the cards for my investment.
There are going to be adventures. They will be included as part of the expansions. But it looks like you won't get cards from them anymore.
figmentPez
Staff member
Yeah, which means Hearthstone just got a LOT more expensive.
Got 1100 gold right now. Hard to resist temptation to spend it, but hearing more news for next expansion makes it easier. And gotta save real money for the pre-sale discount :/.
Live Q&A for Year of the Mammoth starts at 2:00 eastern.
New brawl is deck full of legendaries.
I faced off against my wife. She put out two Dr. Booms ... and Baron Rivendare.
:/
I faced off against my wife. She put out two Dr. Booms ... and Baron Rivendare.
:/
The /r/hearthstone subreddit has become a real whinefest, I can't go there anymore because of so many people claiming the game is dead, upset about year of the mammoth, bitching about adventures going away and how blizzard is just trying to make them pay more, etc.
Oh, and a thread about eveything Kripp ever says.
Oh, and a thread about eveything Kripp ever says.
I don't see the logic here.
-Hearthstone is at its heart a freemium game, except that there is no fixed cost to "complete" the purchase of the entire game. There are maximum and minimum costs, but there is no guarantee where any individual's total outlay will fall.
-As sets/cards are retired (i.e., "moved to Wild"), the minimum cost to acquire the cards that come from those retired sets increases to 400% their original cost since the only way to acquire retired cards is to craft them from dust. This incentivizes purchasing packs early in the hopes of acquiring as many of them via RNG as possible rather than having to craft them from dust. As an example, it takes about 14 dusted packs to get enough dust to craft a standard legendary.
-Packs can be purchased with in-game currency, but the rate at which this in-game currency can be acquired is not fast enough to ensure that all cards in a set/adventure can be acquired before their availability is restricted.
-An average arena win rate should be 50% (assuming evenly matched decks), which means the most common outcome should be 3 wins/3 losses, which is just barely enough to get back the value spent.
So essentially there are only two ways to really succeed at Hearthstone:
-Buy a lot of gold/packs
-Be very, very good/lucky at arena
I know the easy answer is, "So play a lot of arena, then." This may be true, but you have to remember the number of people playing. A whole pyramid of people have to drop out at three losses in order for one person to hit 12 wins, and that's a whoooole lotta entry fees.
--Patrick
Alright, based on the complaints I have seen most, I'm going to assume the thinking here is "The loss of adventures means we can no longer get x number of cards guaranteed for x money."
I don't find this to be true, but I'm not going to touch on that just yet. Instead, I'm going to touch on why I think replacing adventures with another expansion is the best thing for the actual state of the game. A lot of this is going to be conjecture on my part, I am not a game designer nor an expert, but I do play a lot, so this is from my own personal perspective.
Statement 1: a stagnant meta makes the game boring. We are seeing this now with piratestone, and it hasn't been here that long. But it isn't nearly as bad as what was seen early 2016 with the continued reign of shamanstone. From the release of old gods until the release of Mean Streets of Gadgetzan marked one of the longest periods of what is now considered a stagnant meta, with shaman dominating 30% of all games played, out of 9 classes. And this introduces us to problem 1,
Problem 1: Adventures do not have a large impact on the state of the game.
There have been a few cards (Reno, Elise) released in expansions that did lead to entirely new archtypes, but for the most part the influx of cards from adventures are so small compared to the rest that they don't really change much. What changes did One Night in Karazan bring? Not a whole lot, most decks still remained the same, with only a few of the cards in that set ever making it into decks. This is why the period between old gods and mean streets felt so long.
So by changing the mid-year adventure into another large expansion, the number of new cards coming in increases drastically, and the state of the game will continue to shift and evolve.
Even though I set up a numbering system, I'm going to abandon it now, because I play fast and loose that way.
The other perceived problem: Not having an adventure to buy is bad for free to play players because they no longer get the value of being guaranteed the cards of the adventure set.
If we go back to problem 1, only a few cards in each adventure ever really saw play. And to get those cards you had to not only buy the wing that they were rewarded in, but if it was a later wing, you needed to buy all of the previous wings as well. To fully buy an adventure with gold is 700 gold a wing, or 3500 gold total for all five wings, for a total of 45 cards.
Conversely, you could buy 35 packs and get 175 cards. Sure, they might not include the ones you want, but unlike the adventure system, you can just craft the cards that you actually want to use, where with the adventure system you cannot craft adventure cards until they cycle out of standard.[DOUBLEPOST=1487827752,1487827456][/DOUBLEPOST]
I also started writing all of the above before seeing your reply
figmentPez
Staff member
Problem with Kharazhan was not that it was an adventure and had fewer cards, it's the fact that it didn't have as many impactful cards as other releases. Blackrock Mountain and League of Explorers had about the same number of impactful cards as any expansion did. Most of an expansion is pack filler like the Worgen Greaser.
The amount of gold/money it takes to get all the important cards from a release is higher for an expansion than it is for an adventure. It doesn't matter if you can craft the cards, you still have to save up the dust, and it takes a lot of dust.
The amount of gold/money it takes to get all the important cards from a release is higher for an expansion than it is for an adventure. It doesn't matter if you can craft the cards, you still have to save up the dust, and it takes a lot of dust.