Blizzard Explains Why It Gives "Bad Cards" To New Hearthstone Players

[Adeptus Aspartem]

I know. I was, however, only addressing the "but Dr. Boom can't be nerfed to 6/6!" which is an argument I tend to see more than I really need to. Because, yes, he can't. No, that doesn't mean his stats can't be altered.

As for his boom bots - yes, I've already mentioned that they are a big problem. Again, that doesn't mean they can't be adjusted to be less of a potential problem. One way is to remove the RNG, as you suggested, another one is to keep it - make him summon 0-2 bots, for example and he is not that reliable. Lower the boom bots damage by 1, so they do 0-3 and that can also do it. These numbers may need a bit of tweaking, you could even mix and match these approaches but it's not like it's impossible to make Dr. Boom formidable yet not as powerful.

Oh, okay. Sure, i totally agree. A Dr. Boom fix wouldn't be so hard to do actually, but Blizzard and balancing just do not go together really well.

 

[Politrukk]

taking the 40g quest standard that means you need to play 20 days to open one wing

Once again, you are grinding wrong. It's takes around half that time to grind the gold.

Besides even if we take your figures, you are still overestimating the time - you will be getting gold from wins while doing quests, so even if we assume you are after the absolute minimum gold you can have get per day, while still doing quests, we are actually looking at 50g per day on most days. Sure, some quests do not require you to win (kill X creatures, for example), but those are fewer than the "Win 3 times with X or Y class" ones, so on average you still have more than 45g per day.

Legendaries cost around 1600 dust to craft, if one is going to disenchant all their cards that they bought with gold, the average return is about 5-20. per card.

Just to expand on that - the vast majority of times, a card pack yields 40 dust. A card pack costs 100g. For 150g you can play arena and a decent run would give you a card pack plus a bit of other rewards so if you're OK at arena, you'll probably be getting a bit more value of your gold there.

Still, at any rate, it does take a long time to get the dust for a legendary. While disenchanting other legendaries helps, it's almost always not cost efficient - disenchanting a card gives you 1/4 of its crafring cost, so since each legendary card is 1600 dust, you need to disenchant 4 to craft another legendary. And most of the times you don't want to be disenchanting them, unless you get a double.

I wasn't actually sure on the numbers they were a rough estimate from memory, I was being a bit lazy there sorry.
The point in conclusion still stands though.

 

[DoPo]

The point in conclusion still stands though.

It does, I just wanted to fix the math. As I mentioned previously, I've grinded gold for all but the last adventure expansions, so it irks me to see people inflating how long it takes. Of course, it's by no means fast, but it is not several weeks worth of play.

 

[Frankster]

OK, which decent card games do you play/know off?

Infinity wars is good and has remained a CCG I come back to.

Also trying World of Tanks generals which has a deck building element but isn't a pure CCG. Anyways in that one starting/early tier cards don't get obsolete and if anything can lower the total power of your deck to balance out high rating cards you might have. Won't get into gritty details of it but tldr it's not worth it stacking even the prenium cards.

Kingdoms CCG was ok but I moved on from that one.

Played a bunch more of CCGS, especially since I got my ipad but I was already binging and going from one to another before that. 90% of most CCGs ive played I moved on early cos they had something I didnt like for one reason or another, or was dieing due to flagging popularity and increasingly desperate measures to make money.
At this time I can't remember more names but I hope the 3 named was enough information regardless to satisfy your one sentence question.

 

[RedDeadFred]

It's really sad to see the old War Golem vs Doctor Boom debate being rolled out again. War Golem is not the baseline for how much power cards should have for 7 mana... it's well below the baseline. And yes, it *is* fine to give new players starting cards which are well below the baseline in power, so long as you also give them enough better cards so that as soon as they figure out how bad it is, they never have to use it again.

The problem with Doctor Boom is not that it's better than War Golem... it's that it's better than everything else, as well.

It's a very strong card, but I don't actually think it's that bad compared to others. It's a 7 mana card and it's only a one of so it doesn't get to have a big impact as often as something like Mad Scientist and it doesn't let you snowball the game early on. I'd much rather them look at cards like Mad Scientist, Shielded Minibot, and Piloted Shredder before Dr. Boom. Not saying he's not imbalanced, I just think there other cards having a bigger negative impact on the game.

 

[Bat Vader]

I'm actually really happy I dislike CCGs. From how everyone talks about Magic and Hearthstone they both sound like convoluted and complicated games to play and master.

Having to arrange decks, keep a deck updated, study player strategies, etc all sounds like more work than I ever would want to exert.

 

[FalloutJack]

I haven't been into a card game of this nature in years. This does zilch to interest me at all. If you really wanted to hook people, you'd give them previews of different cool cards, things with a limited use to entice people to play and earn the shit. BUT, if you do that, you need to give a stable starter deck. Otherwise, you are practically telling players you are shit.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Guys it's f2p. It's expected of you to at least buy the wings (They're worth their price btw).
Sure you can go and don't spend a dime, but why do you complain about grind then? You paid nothing, don't grind and play something else.
In the end it's a card game. Card games are expensive, that's just how this goes.

No. Magic Duels gives you enough cards that are decent (not good or outstanding) that you can make a decent beginner deck to grind up some better cards. Getting a new pack can be done in 40 minutes to an hour. I've plowed down 57 hours into Magic Duels and haven't spent a dime and I'm using a rough proxy of one of my physical deck that I assembled after some 10 hours of playing.

Hearthstone is incredibly grindy even for a F2P game.

You can't really expect to compete with no cardpool in a constructed format. That's what limited formats are for - and the Arena provides a very good expirience for players that just started. And also a way to A. get a cardpool B. sustain your gold.
Playin' decent in Arena + finish quests + doing Tavernbrawl is more than enough for any casual to get something going on.

So first I must grind the gold and then I have to hope for some good matching in Arena or I won't recoup my gold and then I have to repeat this for fucking ever to get good cards, because all the cards I started out with are shit? Where's the design logic in forcing me to play for 40+ hours before I can actually start enjoying the main format of the game?

Also to the article or more precisely Mr. Brode: Don't call them bad cards. Simple (as he did call them later on) is the correc term.
That's what MTG always did, specially in the now gone Coresets. They're way more basic for newbies to grasp.

Simple and bad are two different things. Mark Rosewater (lead designer of MtG) openly admits that there are some bad cards among the commons and that that is how it should be. Not every card should see constructed play and some should be "left overs" in limited. A simple card is one that doesn't utilize complicated mechanics (a 2/2 2 mana drop) while a bad card is one that simply has no reason for being in your deck (a 2/2 4 mana drop). Hearthstone gives you a shitload of the latter and a modest amount of the former.

Let me relay an anecdote: My sister convinced me to play some Hearthstone with her recently. Afterwards I did some automatching for fun. Out of four matches I only encountered one opponent that didn't drop a gold or silver every turn. The worst was the guy who had an entire machine deck that synergized way beyond anything my basic deck could do. It is not fun to feel that you are out of your league completely and that it doesn't matter how well you play because your opponents cards are simply better in every respect. I choose to say fuck it and call a friend to play Magic, but what the game wanted me to do was to hand out my credit card info and buy some packs. Hearthstone is so greedy and so unforgiving to new players that it makes World of Tanks/Warships seem benign in their attempts to get players to pay up.

 

[CaitSeith]

OK, which decent card games do you play/know off?

Infinity wars is good and has remained a CCG I come back to.

Also trying World of Tanks generals which has a deck building element but isn't a pure CCG. Anyways in that one starting/early tier cards don't get obsolete and if anything can lower the total power of your deck to balance out high rating cards you might have. Won't get into gritty details of it but tldr it's not worth it stacking even the prenium cards.

Kingdoms CCG was ok but I moved on from that one.

Played a bunch more of CCGS, especially since I got my ipad but I was already binging and going from one to another before that. 90% of most CCGs ive played I moved on early cos they had something I didnt like for one reason or another, or was dieing due to flagging popularity and increasingly desperate measures to make money.
At this time I can't remember more names but I hope the 3 named was enough information regardless to satisfy your one sentence question.

Fair enough. Thank you. I'll check them when I have time.

 

[MerlinCross]

I'm actually really happy I dislike CCGs. From how everyone talks about Magic and Hearthstone they both sound like convoluted and complicated games to play and master.

Having to arrange decks, keep a deck updated, study player strategies, etc all sounds like more work than I ever would want to exert.

Or you know, either make a funny deck that works vs your buddies or just net deck.

I have a few MTG decks that would never do well in like ranked fights but they're fun against my friends.

 

[Adeptus Aspartem]

No. Magic Duels gives you enough cards that are decent (not good or outstanding) that you can make a decent beginner deck to grind up some better cards. Getting a new pack can be done in 40 minutes to an hour. I've plowed down 57 hours into Magic Duels and haven't spent a dime and I'm using a rough proxy of one of my physical deck that I assembled after some 10 hours of playing.

Hearthstone is incredibly grindy even for a F2P game.

I wouldn't take Duels as an example for everything, as it is just a tutorial for MTG and an investment to get more people playing the real card game. This thing will probably not break even in costs for WotC.
There are 2 completly diffrent designs behind these games. One is advertisment and the other one is a full-fledged product.

On the grindiness: I disagree. Sofar i think both games are roughly equal. 60 Hours of Hearthstone arena - given you're a decent player - will give you enough stuff to have a deck to play Ranked.
Also if you want to speed up the process: Pay some money. That's the whole deal behind these games.

If you like the game, spend some money and have a blast with all your fancy cards. If you don't like it, don't play. If you want to freeride, then don't complain about grinding.
Especially when Hearthstone gives you 2 awesome modes to play (TB and Arena), where you can compete with everyone without spending a single dime - while also slowly building up your cardpool.

So first I must grind the gold and then I have to hope for some good matching in Arena or I won't recoup my gold and then I have to repeat this for fucking ever to get good cards, because all the cards I started out with are shit? Where's the design logic in forcing me to play for 40+ hours before I can actually start enjoying the main format of the game?

Diffrence of opinions: I consider limited a way better format than constructed. Calling one of them "main format" is a bias. I'd wager a bet that Arena is played by more players than constructed.
150g is no grind. If you're casual and log in only a few times a week, you can just finish your dailies and play with that gold, because it's enough. Don't tell me otherwise, because it's what i do.

Apparently you don't like limited formats, then i've to tell you Hearthstone isn't the game you're looking for, if you don't want to pay for cards. Grind or pay, what's the big deal?
You can litteraly sink thousands of hours into HS, if you're into it, what's the problem with spending 50$ on such a high amount of playtime?
Again: If you don't want to pay, that's fine, but why should you get access to everything, when there's already enough free stuff to do?

Cardgames are expensive.

Simple and bad are two different things. Mark Rosewater (lead designer of MtG) openly admits that there are some bad cards among the commons and that that is how it should be. Not every card should see constructed play and some should be "left overs" in limited. A simple card is one that doesn't utilize complicated mechanics (a 2/2 2 mana drop) while a bad card is one that simply has no reason for being in your deck (a 2/2 4 mana drop). Hearthstone gives you a shitload of the latter and a modest amount of the former.

Let me relay an anecdote: My sister convinced me to play some Hearthstone with her recently. Afterwards I did some automatching for fun. Out of four matches I only encountered one opponent that didn't drop a gold or silver every turn. The worst was the guy who had an entire machine deck that synergized way beyond anything my basic deck could do. It is not fun to feel that you are out of your league completely and that it doesn't matter how well you play because your opponents cards are simply better in every respect. I choose to say fuck it and call a friend to play Magic, but what the game wanted me to do was to hand out my credit card info and buy some packs. Hearthstone is so greedy and so unforgiving to new players that it makes World of Tanks/Warships seem benign in their attempts to get players to pay up.

For clarification, i play MtG for over 10 years now and i'm well aware about the design principles of MtG, but thanks anyway.
Where to begin? If you really play MtG for real, i can't understand why you'd be so upset with HS, when MtG does everything HS does, but even worse.

1. There are far more useless cards in MTG (relativley) compared to HS. The literally thousands of commons and uncommons i've thrown into the bin over the years could drown a bunch of puppies. This stems from the fact that MtG compared to HS has to sell way more packs and the goodies are surrounded by(or hidden behind) a crapton of cardboard waste.

2. Playing constructed in Magic is incredibly expensive unless you've a really huge cardpool - and i'm only talkin' about Standard here, if we start talkin about Eternal formats we're talking 4-digit prices for decks.
But even in Standard which rotates pretty fast, you've to constantly keep up the pace with new editions. Either you buy displays, play alot of limited (arena?) or are a ruthless and efficient trader - but even then it takes a huge amount of effort.
My roommate has a cardpool worth a decent car and even he does cardsharing with a bunch of local players here, because else it's just to taxing to get a hand on playsets of every Fotm-landbase (5-15$ per card usually) and the FotM-Moneyrare, which nowadays can be anywhere between 50-100$ easily (Lookin' at you Jace, the Moneydrainer).

Cardgames have pretty high barriers of entry for new players. Especially in constructed, because it needs extensive game knowlegde and usually alot of cards to build the necessary decks. That means either time or money investment.
HS does imo a very good job in that regard with a funny limited format for a cheap price (A MtG booster draft in my region costs me 10-15x the price an Arena run does), a funmode with some free stuff and an awesome single player expirience.
If you like HS and you just buy the single-player wings and use the rest of the gold to get your bankroll started in Arena, you'll be havin' fun for hundreds of hours.

tl;dr
Cardgames are expensive, cardgames aren't newbie friendly. HS does a good job in lowering that entry barrier.
And spend some money if you don't want to grind.

 

[Kajin]

From what I can tell, Hearthstone is basically a perfect recreation of what it's like to play a collectible card game in real life. You buy packs of cards and use those to build decks. It was pay to win before that was even a model video games used. I don't get what the fuss is.