Hi mapsters, I tried Hearstone and I wanted to know if anyone else around here tried it and what are the opinions on it. I'll share my thoughts to get it started.
By just downloading and playing it I found the game is fun, and as Blizzard likes to say it is simple to learn and hard to master. But I got "stuck" too fast by being beaten by other players, so I decided to take a break and read a little about it. What do I find in the forums? Unfortunately a too familar discussion about "pro builds" and "current metagame".
Yes, SC2 ladder experience all over again, but I think it will be worse for Hearstone. Why? In SC2 all players can choose 1 of 3 races, and during a match can try a few options on how to play it, and I mean few because we all know there are these "builds" that fit the "current metagame" and if you don't have them decorated you're already behind. In Hearstone you pick one of (I don't know, 8 classes?) and create a deck for it with a strategy in mind. Then you pick one of your decks BEFORE you go find a player to fight. That means your strategy is already set, the build is or isn't already there. To make things worse in Hearstone you can spend money, real money, to have more and better cards available which means new players have one more (strong) disadvantage.
I think this all comes from a specific design in strategies from Blizzard's teams: There are 2 design extremes where in one multiple strategies are good or at least viable, and hardly ever one is better than most of the others. And the other extreme where most strategies aren't viable at all, only a few are any good, and there's at least the potential for an ideal strategy, the one you should be following. It seems Blizzard games are going towards the second extreme... too much in my opinion.
So, in my conclusion: with ideal builds/strategies, plus real money making your options better I foresee that once more it will be an unwelcoming environment for new players. If this scenario is already present during beta, it can only become stronger after release.
But as I said I started the thread to know your own opinions, and see what I can learn from them.
Welcome to CCG :D
The former situation of many strategies being viable is the best meta. But yes, the latter situation can arise. Wizards of the Coast (makers of Magic The Gathering, the first TCG) has 2 mechanism for dealing with this. 1st is the Future Future League, which takes cards in design and purposely tries to break them (this is in house). Other is to alter the card pool, by rotating (making no longer format legal) cards (usually entire sets), or in extreme cases, banning them. Since Blizzard has the luxury of no real world cards, they can probably just tweak existing cards. The main solution for solving meta imbalances will be just creating more cards, making more strategies available.
As for the pay to win aspect, live with it, it is inherent to the genre. If you want to truly avoid pay to win, Blizzard will need to introduce a draft format, where you are given a set of randomized cards, you choose 1, pass the remainder to the next player, and go around until all cards are picked. Rinse repeat a couple of times. This eliminates pay to win, and makes both the deck building and playing into skill based aspects. Or they can do other forms of draft (Give you a bunch of random cards, far in excess of deck size, and build a deck from it).
Welcome to CCG :D
The former situation of many strategies being viable is the best meta. But yes, the latter situation can arise. Wizards of the Coast (makers of Magic The Gathering, the first TCG) has 2 mechanism for dealing with this. 1st is the Future Future League, which takes cards in design and purposely tries to break them (this is in house). Other is to alter the card pool, by rotating (making no longer format legal) cards (usually entire sets), or in extreme cases, banning them. Since Blizzard has the luxury of no real world cards, they can probably just tweak existing cards. The main solution for solving meta imbalances will be just creating more cards, making more strategies available.
As for the pay to win aspect, live with it, it is inherent to the genre. If you want to truly avoid pay to win, Blizzard will need to introduce a draft format, where you are given a set of randomized cards, you choose 1, pass the remainder to the next player, and go around until all cards are picked. Rinse repeat a couple of times. This eliminates pay to win, and makes both the deck building and playing into skill based aspects. Or they can do other forms of draft (Give you a bunch of random cards, far in excess of deck size, and build a deck from it).