Anyone playing Hearthstone?

[DeliveryGodNoah_v1legacy]

I was on Battle.n----sorry, Blizzard App, about a week or so ago and decided in my boredom to download Hearthstone.

I played a bit with the AI and found that I mostly enjoyed my time and picked up the game pretty quickly.

I even got my girlfriend to play along with me, and we dueled and played seperately online and earned a few card packs and made decks out of what we could.

But should I continue to invest my time? I've played at least 20 or so hours, likely more (I'm just guessing), but I ran into some of the same players a couple times. Maybe it's just that's what the game keeps pairing me with based off of skill, but I don't see a lot of people talking about the game, and no one I know other than myself and girlfriend play the game.

 

[jademunky]

Well, I play it and love it but I was playing since vanilla, have quite a few cards and can usually win more than I lose. When you start, you will be playing catchup with a lot of people who have been playing for years and have cards that you just will not have access to.

There is also the problem of people just being dickish for seemingly no reason. There have been dozens of times people will send me a friend invite only to unleash this weird torrent of insults for my choice of deck (and always after losing).

But yeah, it is still great to play on the phone or tablet with some crappy netflix show like Iron Fist also playing in the background #wastingelectricityFTW

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I was on Battle.n----sorry, Blizzard App, about a week or so ago and decided in my boredom to download Hearthstone.

I played a bit with the AI and found that I mostly enjoyed my time and picked up the game pretty quickly.

I even got my girlfriend to play along with me, and we dueled and played seperately online and earned a few card packs and made decks out of what we could.

But should I continue to invest my time? I've played at least 20 or so hours, likely more (I'm just guessing), but I ran into some of the same players a couple times. Maybe it's just that's what the game keeps pairing me with based off of skill, but I don't see a lot of people talking about the game, and no one I know other than myself and girlfriend play the game.

Tons of people still play Hearthstone, it's a hugely popular and enormously successful game.

I don't necessarily know that I'd recommend it to a new player though. For a "free" game it requires an enormous investment...of either time or money...to become competitive.

That said, if you're willing to spend some money up front to kickstart yourself, now is the time to get interested. There's a new expansion about to launch, and the month immediately following an expansion is the game at its best. The meta is diverse and dynamic, there's a lot of crazy experimentation, and the top tier decks haven't yet calcified and started driving everyone insane.

 

[Jerast]

I say no, because once you progress further through rankings and such you're going to get absolutely raped unless you're using net decks, which you can only reliably build if you invest money into it. As a new player unless you can pump 12 hours+ a day into the game you're not unlocking those cards without investing dollars.

The game is extremely popular and populated though,

 

[SlumlordThanatos]

Hearthstone is a lot like Magic: The Gathering. You can definitely build a deck out of some cards that your friend gives you in a shoebox, but you're not going to be able to take that deck to the local gaming store and expect to win with it unless you're supremely skilled.

With some time, effort, and some research, you can build a viable deck without sinking hundreds of hours into the game, but unlocking cards (especially legendaries) can be a long, tedious process, especially if you don't like playing Arena, which is where it's easiest to unlock new cards.

You're gonna have to drop some money on cards if you want to be able to compete and/or play more than one deck.

 

[DeliveryGodNoah_v1legacy]

It's odd, because I haven't been losing, at least not with the Warlock deck I've built. I've won significantly more than I've lost.

That's just in a standard match though, I haven't really touched competitive.

It just didn't feel very popular to me still because I don't see very many people talking about it, and again, I came across the same players a couple times. Is it just where I'm at skill wise?

 

[BloatedGuppy]

It just didn't feel very popular to me still because I don't see very many people talking about it, and again, I came across the same players a couple times. Is it just where I'm at skill wise?

New players are kept in a "kiddie pool" until they've passed a threshold. Cannot recall offhand what that threshold is. This is true of Arena as well. The game does have a hidden MMR.

From a list of the 6 most popular online games as of March 2017...

Another Blizzard game makes the list! And this one beats out Overwatch by 30 million players. Hearthstone had more than 50 million players log in last month, which means more people play Hearthstone than the three games above combined. Despite coming in second, Hearthstone is actually the most popular game to watch in the world of eSports, and since it has that distinction, Hearthstone competitors get paid the most amount of money to play in eSports tournaments (sometimes millions of dollars).

Hearthstone came in #2, behind only League of Legends, beating out Overwatch, DOTA 2, WoW, and Counterstrike.

It's not just you and one other guy playing it. Believe me.

 

[shrekfan246]

I still play Hearthstone pretty frequently, and yeah, you can occasionally come across the same players multiple times. It doesn't happen much to me, but it's still happened even after having played the game since it came out of beta. It's kinda luck of the draw; one time I even got matched up against a person who I know is a streamer. She wrecked my shit.

 

[squid5580]

It's odd, because I haven't been losing, at least not with the Warlock deck I've built. I've won significantly more than I've lost.

That's just in a standard match though, I haven't really touched competitive.

It just didn't feel very popular to me still because I don't see very many people talking about it, and again, I came across the same players a couple times. Is it just where I'm at skill wise?

I would recommend you play competitive to get to 20 every month. You will get a few extra cards. Just wait a week or 2 after reset to do it. Also do the hidden quests. Beat all the innkeepers on hard. Lvl every class to 20 are a couple off the top of my head. And if you aren't opposed to spending a few bucks the welcome bundle for $5 is a steal

 

[Maximum Bert]

I played for a bit as a (previous) long time magic the gathering fan and fan of card games in general I defnitely wanted to give it a go.

The presentation is great and when I played the card balance was not to bad from what I could tell sure you had the uber decks this happens in most CCGs but individually cards were fine.

I dropped it just before the first expansion though for a number of reasons but the two most prominent were

1) Its a CCG and as such you will forever be chasing cards this is not just a hearthstone problem and is also one of the primary reasons I dropped magic but as a person who loves to make decks as much as play this is a huge turn off if I cannot even make what I want to without a massive time and/or financial investment first. With magic this was not a problem thanks to pieces of paper and card sleeves but with an online only game its a huge turn off for me.

2) Its another magic clone. It takes the basic magic formula ruins the theme strips back the mechanics to make it so that there are a lot less interesting combinations and fun decks to try and build then adds its own small changes on top which do give it a slightly different feel but not by much. After playing magic for so long I find it hard to care about another clone its just to similar in mechanics yet it sacrifices to much of the versatility of magic to make itself easier to understand. I hate the term but I feel dumbed down is an adequate if lazy way of describing it.

There are other issues I have with it but as I said those were probably the two most prominent. A fair few of my friends played it on release but after a few weeks we all stopped for similar reasons as the above ones stated.

Im not going to put anyone down for playing and enjoying it though and it is free at least for entry I would say just be careful before spending real money on it as it is in my opinion a pretty hollow and unprogressive card game all things considered. Honestly I feel they should have just used the WOW RL card game and made it digital instead. Sure it may have also been a magic clone (most are to a greater or lesser extent) but it was a lot more interesting and ambitious in coming up with its own ideas than Hearthstone is.

 

[Comic Sans]

I have mixed feelings on the game. I used to play it a lot, and tossed more money at it than I realized at the time, but it's really hard to recommend now. I guess now would be a good time to try since they are rotating some of the sets out and everything will be brand new for a lot of people, but on the whole at this point I would say the game would be near impossible for newcomers to really get into without dropping a LOT of money and time. It does not take long in ladder or even normal games to start coming across top tier decks that will smash any deck that is not perfectly optimized. Once the meta settles down there tends to be a few decks that absolutely crush pretty much anything and you will see them pretty much every game. And since there's no way to unlock specific cards outside of getting lucky in a pack or getting rid of a lot of cards and using Dust, you will be using sub par decks for a long time. It takes a lot of dust to craft epics and god forbid legendaries.

So in a nutshell, by all means play it. They throw a lot of stuff at you early and especially with these new cards coming out, they are giving a lot of freebies. But don't spend money on it until that new game smell has worn off, except maybe the $5 welcome pack since that's a good deal. The flaws of the game don't become apparent until you've settled in a bit.

 

[Kaimax]

Played it, Liked it and stopped playing after the 2nd expansion just befor the "explorer" expansion (or whatever the name was).

My reason for stopping is I have other games to play. Now I only watch one stream by "DisguisedToast", a Hearthstone streamer who focuses more on entertainment than the "meta", but that doesn't mean he's a bad player, his meme deck called "MemeLock", a warlock deck actually works in the Meta and he managed to get to top 200.


He almost became pro, but hilarity ensues