So, I tried Hearthstone. After my original impression of a simple game with Blizzard's typical child-like, colorful graphics, I kept playing. First of all, there are a LOT of free games, in the training area, which earns you XP to get any character to level 10 and free gold (for real purchases). It takes at least 10 games to get a character to level 10, all the way unlocking new free cards along the way. So with 9 classes and 10+ games per class, that is 100 games to unlock all free cards and learn the game. From there, you can buy and unlock "expert" deck cards, which are pretty cheap. Either play in ranked for gold (F2P model), or purchase decks. Decks consist of 30 cards, and you can make custom decks. Almost all cards, including exotics and legendaries, are craftable. There is something like 956 total cards at release. Tons of abilities to buff, nerf, destroy, summon, AOE, etc. so there is a lot of deep strategy here. Playing in ranked reveals how hard the game actually is in PvP mode. Finally, the arena mode is simply great - randomly draw three cards and choose one, repeast until you have 30 total cards, enter arena and battle others in PvP - if you win, your rewards increase exponentially and you can win big prizes including many free decks. Lose three times and you are out! Sound, animations, artwork, animated playing "boards," and game balance are all top-notch. The game grows on you like a fungus and is very addictive. Easy to learn, hard to master - the mark of any great game, in my book. Also, the element of randomly drawn cards while playing a match adds a LOT of replayability. You cannot just run the same deck and expect to win every time. Overall, an amazingly polished game with high production standards at release, no bugs that I encountered, and fun gameplay. I would rate 4/5, because you have to give the game a chance if you are turned off at first, because it does grow on you. Very interested to see where Blizz takes this game, there is a lot of potential here.
The new user experience in hearthstone is almost identical to Infinity Wars. Its a good system for getting new players into a game and I wish Pox would try to emulate it.
WAY too random. Too small hand, bad balance, all in all pretty meh. Dunno what TeaNinja has with Yu-Gi-Oh, I think thats pretty great. No randomness, lots of strategy, murderous complexity ... The theme-locking is a bit sad, but still, inside the themes there's a lot of flexibility nevertheless.
Yeah, pretty much. I still play weekly, do an Arena run and dont touch it for another couple of days or so. I expect the game to grow a lot when they release the next expansion, though, things have been pretty stale and that´s no good for any game.
microtransactions do suck there though. HS has tons of potential and it has zero potential at the same time. theorycally, it can go beyond wonders with such a gameplay, but it simply won't. this doesn't mean it won't be popular, just do not expect some radical changes. they want the game to be where it is now. with those random effects and stuff. this is what attracts "the mass of players". and those masses are core customers of their. competitive scene will grow on ANY game, which involves money and/or tourneys. it won't be THAT competitive scene, but in the eyes of a customer from "the mass" it will look superb enough. think about it, compare DotA2 and LoL. Hearthstone uses what League of Legends does now. mixing the accessability (skillwise) for every person deciding to join the game with good gameplay. why would they want to choose the route of DotA2? even if DotA2 has uncomparable gameplay to LoL and is basically superior by any reasonable aspect of game/competitive scene and literally anything, it still has much weaker prize pools and tourneys are not so mainstreamed. don't get me wrong, DotA2 events are BIG, but they're laughable compared to LoL. if you remember last summer tourneys, you might be in know what I mean. not sure if I'm clear enough, but HS is designed game for the masses, even if real competitive scene is hurt by those masses, it doesn't matter since it is based on those masses. I just watches IEM two days ago, where a guy made comeback by using Brawl. he summoned his own minion and Brawled 5-6 of opposite HUGE minions into his 1. that's like regular emotion of every event of HS I watched so far. everyone is FULL of those. it doesn't mean the game is solely based on luck, by any means. but for competitive scene, it is obviously too much. so the fact that you're very interested to see where Blizzard will take this game means that you're probably not talking about competitive scene since there is no other way for the game, when to go where it came from.
I played a match where the opponent replaced his avatar with some kind of big ass demon thing. clearly a game ending move for him., but I happened to have a secret spell out that caused his next deploy to have 1 health. won the next turn. How do you not love that?
I like Yugioh. However to me it seems many people don't, or at least say they don't. It's actually the best card game I know xD
YuGiOh wasn't terrible to pick up, but I did like the earlier expansions/decks compared to the newer ones...
So for those who have looked at the game and didn't like it, how deep into it did you get? One character to lvl 10, all chars to 20? Any ranked play? It seems like the pox crowd usually evaluates these kind of games at the 'meta lvl' so are we talking legendary ranked play or what. Btw what is the answer for a priest running 2x mind control?
Well, I leveled all my characters past lvl 10 already, but as far as rank goes the highest I got was 11 or something. To be honest, there WAS very few reasons to play ranked games, since things get a bit stale and you end up facing the same decks and cards over and over again. Not that it doesnt happen in Arena, but at least the rewards are cool and deck variety is bigger. The answer, Ragic, is not playing your big/better minions after the Priest reach lvl 10. Simple. Try to bait him into controlling a disposable minion. Priest bgs are very weak on early game, try to exploit that. Also, whenever you play against Priests the key thing is to drop/buff minions to 4 damage. They have no right answer against that.
The game has potential. But sadly it's only a shadow of what it could be because that's how Blizzard does things nowadays. Firstly there are too many neutral cards that are the best in what they do. For example every single rush deck will have a leper gnome. Anyone needing a 4 drop will use a yeti. I have played against the exact same deck of 2x argent squire 2xleper gnomes 2xfaerie dragon 2x harvest golem + 2x argent commander only difference were the class cards. You see the exact same cards every game. There's a reason why in mtg artifacts are under the curve. Because they can be played in any deck. In hearthstone the best cards are neutral. Meaning you will see them in every deck. Rushing is broken. There is no way to defend yourself. With a good draw rush decks can kill you in 5 turns. When playing against rush decks all that matters is if you draw your lightning storms and taunters in time. The game has 30 cards in the deck with a limit of 2. You draw 5 cards at beginning. The chance of drawing something you desperately need till turn 4 can be quite low. And at times you play against a murlock deck with the perfect draw and there is nothing you can do. The game could really use blocking. Too much RNG. Beyond the draw RNG this game has an unhealthy amount of it. It's like every second card has the ''random'' clause on it. Games are decided based on it. Not sure if you guys watched the Fight Night tournament but one game a guy was facing lethal damage next turn. He spends 8 mana for Ragnaros and passes the turn. Between 3 minions it hit his enemy who was at exactly 8. Then there was a controversy because a 2 mana card that has a 50% chance of drawing a card every turn drew 14 times for one team and only 7 times for the other. Too much in-built RNG. What cards do is quite limited. It's hard to be creative when everything is so simple and it's only purpose is to deal damage to your enemy. Personally I made a Malygos druid deck and it was the most fun I had, however I still had to include yetis and all the druid staples. Also the information in the OP is a blatant lie. There are not 956 cards atm but only 382. I used to play arena every now and then but because it was more fun seeing different cards every game but eventually even that got boring and I stopped. @Ragic: Priests are probably one of the worst classes atm. Just summon 4 powered minions and they shouldn't be able to do anything in the midgame. If it gets to lategame don't summon a big minion if midcontroling him would lose you the game. Always play with the assumption MC is in his hand. And using MC is 10 mana meaning he cant do anything else. It's easily punishable.
I have a lvl 30 paladin. Bouncing around the 18-19 rank. Running into some obscenely leg/exo heavy decks and have to wonder why they aren't ranked higher. Still having fun with it but I doubt I'll sink any money into it.
Dang, just had a 10-1 Arena run and faced 2 Mage decks in a row.. Ended up 10-3. Prize was good, though, 350 gold and a cool rare Hunter bow. So far have spent 0 $ in the game and my collection keeps getting bigger and bigger. Good F2P model, Id say.
Started playing it and liked it until I reached a level where like one of you said you have to play rush to win not lose. It reminded me too much of Kins and Legends where you had to play pegasus/rush to win. Though here there's no pve so...
