ok i just tried this game and after 25 games i faced the druid and immediately deleted hearthstone (ragequit). It's just ridiculous. i was owning this guy whole game my hero was full hp he was 4 hp, less cards, nothing on board and i have plenty of stuff and fireball for finishing him. And then some bullshit happens. He draw some card that replenish full hp for both characters!!!!! WTF?! (and most hillarious that i was thinking: "No way this game has such a card that will save people in such situation....) After that he turn all my high tier stuff to treants and use bunch of starfalls and started healing like a MAD +8 hp each turn with some wierdo-creatures and magic. then he just got few lucky cards and won..... Anyone experienced something like this in that game? HE HEALED 60+ hp that game i swear!
☑ “This guy's deck is CRAZY!” ☑ “My deck can't win against a deck like that” ☑ "He NEEDED precisely those two cards to win" ☑ “He topdecked the only card that could beat me” ☑ "He had the perfect cards" ☑ “There was nothing I could do” ☑ “I played that perfectly”
well sometimes in hearthstone you just draw well, there is for sure a skill gap for each player, but even the pros know full well that a game could be decided upon with the perfect or completely wrong set of draws.
Edit: Thanks for sharing this fun little story, I just play hearthstone for laughs and fun once in a while ;)
You entered a trading card game, that only uses 30 cards per deck and where each card has numbers below 15 willingly, and yet you bitch about the RNG?. That game is more broken than brood wars in regards each units OPness, but you know what they said, "when everything is OP, then nothing is OP". Every class has imba combos, and because there are so few cards you have even more chances to pull some weird shit.
So, you had a bad game, but if you lost is also your fault, maybe you didn't know all the cards, or your deck wasn't prepared and was hard countered, otherwise you would've know that a druid can pull this and that combo out of their asses and you would've save or avoid playing some cards to counter their strategy.
Also, why do i say that having numbers below 15 make it harder? think starcraft, the shit with lower hp and attack are workers and even they have 30+ so, 1 point of difference in hearthstone is literally doubly more significant, at minimum than a game like starcraft, not counting the fact that unlike starcraft there are more choices of units and standardised behaviours that allow for cross class combos.
IMO there aren't nearly enough cards in hearthstone. I think Blizzard had a huge chance to make a really fun game, but honestly there isn't much there. So much of the fun and strategy that comes with Magic or even Yugioh just isn't there. I still enjoy playing the game, but it gets really boring, really fast. And the fact that there is a 30 card limit for every game mode is incredibly ridiculous in my opinion.
In all honesty, when I started playing Hearthstone, I lost a ton of respect for Blizzard for a variety of reasons.
Considering how Hearthstone has only been out for around 9 months and has already received 153 new cards, I would not worry too much about the relatively low card count. It will increase with time. It seems far too early to judge it for such an issue.
Very true. However, I probably should have been more specific in what I meant. More cards will come with time, yes. However, I think the way that Hearthstone is played is fundamentally flawed. I know next to nothing about Magic, so I will use Yugioh as my base because I grew up collecting Yugioh cards.
In Yugioh, there are trap cards. The absence of a mechanic that is designed specifically as a way to counter what would have otherwise been overpowered cards is something that Hearthstone lacks. Now, I'm not saying that you can't use strategy and a knowledge of the game to counter strategies in Hearthstone, because you definitely can.
What I'm saying is that for low to medium level players (which is always going to be the majority of the playerbase of any game), there isn't enough excitement in the game. There are SO few utility cards that aren't paired with a creature that cards become entirely too niche. There are also some cards that seem to have been made for cheese. For example, the "Doombringer". It has 0 attack and 7 health. If not destroyed, it will kill itself and every other minion on the field. When that card is played, the other player has to focus almost exclusively on destroying that card. Yes, I know, there is an obvious counter and balance to the card: In order to defend it you must have other powerful minions, which would be destroyed. If you leave it undefended, it will die easily.
The point is, the card is a massive game-changer. Even when played incorrectly, if you get lucky, that card alone can win you the game.
I just feel that there is so much about the game that could have been designed better: Terrain cards, trap cards, etc. I also find it incredibly annoying that if you are playing against a class that counters you, you stand little chance at winning.
And unless I'm missing something, you can't choose your deck after you know the class of your opponent. Now you obviously shouldn't be able to change classes, but you should at least be able to choose which deck you use so you don't lose just because you chose the wrong deck. If I'm wrong on that, please let me know.
I just really hope the game lives up to its potential, because there's a lot there. There are a lot of things that can make the game not fun for players who are just looking for a casual game.
Now I usually don't care too much about any of this, but Stan, what you're saying up there is just about the opposite of how Hearthstone works, and you even kind of demolished your own argument. You start off your complaint by stating that there is an "absence of a mechanic that is designed specifically as a way to counter what would otherwise have been overpowered cards". Then you name the Doomsayer. The Doomsayer is precisely what you describe in your sentence. Literally its only function is to counter 'otherwise overpowered cards'. You use it to counter cards like Archmage Antonidas, or Kel'Thuzad. The Doomsayer isn't something that needs to be countered, it is the counter. Heck - it has literally 0 attack. It doesn't need to be counterable precisely because on its own, it's not going to get you any closer to winning in any way. As opposed to something like, say, Ragnaros.
I also find it incredibly annoying that if you are playing against a class that counters you, you stand little chance at winning.
On top of that, this isn't true by a long shot. There are some decks for some classes that have issues with specific kinds of other classes, but this is almost always more of a deck issue than it is a class issue. Freeze mage (pre-GvG, anyway) struggles with control warrior, for instance, but it will likely rape aggro warrior. At the same time, most match-ups purely based on class aren't really favoured either way. Priest vs Warrior? Eh. Hunter vs Warlock? Eh. Rogue vs. Mage? Eh.
And sure, there's a dose of luck involved in some match-ups, and the game in general, but the idea is that the luck is balanced for by playing multiple games. This is why tournament players usually bring three different decks to the table and duke out a best of five, rather than simply playing a single game. Being able to change your deck based on what you're facing is as terrible an idea as going into a match of StarCraft 2 knowing the initial build of your opponent.
It's not that the game doesn't have issues, but everything you're saying up here just makes it seem to me like you haven't played more than two or three matches of Hearthstone in your life. If you want to rant, rant about the effectiveness of aggro decks: zoohunter and zoolock can carry a player all the way to legendary, require barely any thought, and stifle any sort of original deck creation (because no matter how unique or cool your deck is, if it isn't completely zoo-proof, you will lose 50% of your games before they even start). Or rant about the fact that the game is subtly pay2win, since really any half-decent deck incorporates at least three legendary cards that will take a non-paying player half a year of non-stop playing to obtain. Just don't start talking nonsense about an alleged 'lack of counters to powerful cards'. If anything, it is too easy to counter powerful cards.
Clearly I worded my post horribly haha, because Hearthstone is balanced wonderfully. That is why I brought the Doomsayer up, to show that there are definite counters to certain strategies, and then there are counters to those counters. The point I was trying to show is that mechanics that I would have seen in trap cards or spell cards are placed in monster cards (or whatever they're called in Hearthstone, I'm not overly familiar with the game and have only played 20-30 matches), which I personally don't find entertaining.
EDIT: I now see what I worded wrong. When I wrote about the Doomsayer, my mind was still referring to cards that are monster cards that are used for utility.
Also, I'm not saying that those cards don't exist in other trading card games, I'm just saying that it always seems like there's an element of strategy in the game that is missing. I suppose I should stop treating this like other trading card games, and looking at it as it's own entity, because otherwise I think I'll just be disappointed only because it's not what I'm expecting.
Being able to change your deck based on what you're facing is as terrible an idea as going into a match of StarCraft 2 knowing the initial build of your opponent.
I clearly don't know enough about the game. Why is that? In Starcraft II, a huge element of the game is scouting your opponent to find out their build. There is no way to do that in Hearthstone (and there shouldn't be, obviously).
You should be able to identify your opponent's build fairly early in the game, solely from observing their plays - much like the hints you get from scouting in Starcraft II.
Also, I'm not saying that those cards don't exist in other trading card games, I'm just saying that it always seems like there's an element of strategy in the game that is missing. I suppose I should stop treating this like other trading card games, and looking at it as it's own entity, because otherwise I think I'll just be disappointed only because it's not what I'm expecting.
The thing is that as far as I know other card games (like for example Magic), these tend to be way more complicated with way more mechanics involved in general. This also makes them less accessible, even though WOTC has taken steps against this, such as specific noob-friendly formats. Hearthstone isn't meant to be a game with thousands of cards and the mechanical depth that something like Magic offers. This is aptly demonstrated by the fact that Magic decks are literally twice as large in size, and by the fact that a Magic opening hand holds seven cards instead of four or five. This is not to say there's no mechanical depth whatsoever, but rather that it's meant to be a quicker game that you play for a few matches in between other stuff. For such a game, I think it is pretty well balanced and the existing mechanics are fairly well developed. It feels a bit more 'random' as there are more opportunities to swing the game on either side, but that is the price paid for the relative casualness of the game.
I clearly don't know enough about the game. Why is that? In Starcraft II, a huge element of the game is scouting your opponent to find out their build. There is no way to do that in Hearthstone (and there shouldn't be, obviously).
Aside from what Scorp said about scouting, there are definitely decks and character combinations more effective against some than others. Especially within the current meta. Hunters, for example, practically only play aggressive "just hit the enemy's face until he's dead" kind of decks, even if they vary somewhat by themselves. Seeing you're up against a hunter and getting the opportunity to switch would mean that everyone would simply have one 100% 'anti-aggro' deck in their pocket with only taunts and heals in there solely made for the occasions where they face hunters. That's the equivalent of knowing your opponent is going to 6-pool from the start of the game and thus being able to wall off and plunk down an early bunker. And while hunters are in a pretty terrible spot right now balance-wise, this would be the polar opposite of the current situation; rather than hunter aggro decks being too strong for too little required skill, they'd become so weak nobody would ever play them anymore.
It's not that this idea couldn't ever work, but that harkens back to what I said at the start of this post: if you start to allow this sort of 'you can swap your deck upon seeing your opponents class' rules, you need to give, for example, hunters the ability to play control or tempo decks rather than just rush decks. Which means other decks need more counters to be able to deal with a hunters' new playstyle, and maybe the hunter hero power needs a revamp. And then perhaps warriors should get some more non-control options to play, and warlocks should get more counters. And before you know it, you're playing Magic.
the game is fun and all i just gave it another try recently, but almost pure luck-based. I'm kind of competitive player (played dota before) and that was something unusual but after few matches i see that i cant win every time like i used to do in dota. The game though is more relaxing and not too sweaty so my first post was very biased opinion nvm. It's good game i think, but priests and druids seems OP :)!
@TacoManStan: Go
It's not that this idea couldn't ever work, but that harkens back to what I said at the start of this post: if you start to allow this sort of 'you can swap your deck upon seeing your opponents class' rules, you need to give, for example, hunters the ability to play control or tempo decks rather than just rush decks. Which means other decks need more counters to be able to deal with a hunters' new playstyle, and maybe the hunter hero power needs a revamp. And then perhaps warriors should get some more non-control options to play, and warlocks should get more counters.
I guess that's something I would enjoy. With Hearthstone, it feels like there is too much chance involved. I almost feel like it would be the same as having LoL ranked play only allow for blind pick champion selection instead of draft. You might get annihilated just because you got unlucky, and your entire team got countered.
That doesn't meant the same applies to Hearthstone, because it probably doesn't. It doesn't change that when I find my self crossing my fingers thinking "please be up against a _", I don't see that as a good sign for a game. I'd much rather be thinking "alright, if I'm facing a hunter, the current meta is _, therefore I should be prepared to use my _ deck. But they will be expecting that, so I might want to use my _ deck instead."
TL;DR: It's a fun game, but something about it is preventing me from having any desire to play it competitively. Maybe that's the point? I really haven't looked into it, so I don't know.
@TacoManStan: Go
And before you know it, you're playing Magic.
I guess that's definitely been my problem; I was expecting Magic but instead got Hearthstone. I'm beginning to really enjoy Hearthstone, but I'm finding I'm getting bored with it much more easily than I did with Magic, even though I didn't play Magic for more than a week or so before I got overwhelmed by the cost.
Also, I'm so used to Blizzard games containing some of the most in-depth strategic mechanics I've seen that Hearthstone threw me off guard. I thought if anything it would be more complicated than Magic (which in my eyes would have been a good thing), and it wound up being the exact opposite. As you said though, complicated doesn't mean better.
ok i just tried this game and after 25 games i faced the druid and immediately deleted hearthstone (ragequit). It's just ridiculous. i was owning this guy whole game my hero was full hp he was 4 hp, less cards, nothing on board and i have plenty of stuff and fireball for finishing him. And then some bullshit happens. He draw some card that replenish full hp for both characters!!!!! WTF?! (and most hillarious that i was thinking: "No way this game has such a card that will save people in such situation....) After that he turn all my high tier stuff to treants and use bunch of starfalls and started healing like a MAD +8 hp each turn with some wierdo-creatures and magic. then he just got few lucky cards and won..... Anyone experienced something like this in that game? HE HEALED 60+ hp that game i swear!
☑ “This guy's deck is CRAZY!” ☑ “My deck can't win against a deck like that” ☑ "He NEEDED precisely those two cards to win" ☑ “He topdecked the only card that could beat me” ☑ "He had the perfect cards" ☑ “There was nothing I could do” ☑ “I played that perfectly”
@Mozared: Go
well sometimes in hearthstone you just draw well, there is for sure a skill gap for each player, but even the pros know full well that a game could be decided upon with the perfect or completely wrong set of draws.
Edit: Thanks for sharing this fun little story, I just play hearthstone for laughs and fun once in a while ;)
You entered a trading card game, that only uses 30 cards per deck and where each card has numbers below 15 willingly, and yet you bitch about the RNG?. That game is more broken than brood wars in regards each units OPness, but you know what they said, "when everything is OP, then nothing is OP". Every class has imba combos, and because there are so few cards you have even more chances to pull some weird shit.
So, you had a bad game, but if you lost is also your fault, maybe you didn't know all the cards, or your deck wasn't prepared and was hard countered, otherwise you would've know that a druid can pull this and that combo out of their asses and you would've save or avoid playing some cards to counter their strategy.
Also, why do i say that having numbers below 15 make it harder? think starcraft, the shit with lower hp and attack are workers and even they have 30+ so, 1 point of difference in hearthstone is literally doubly more significant, at minimum than a game like starcraft, not counting the fact that unlike starcraft there are more choices of units and standardised behaviours that allow for cross class combos.
IMO there aren't nearly enough cards in hearthstone. I think Blizzard had a huge chance to make a really fun game, but honestly there isn't much there. So much of the fun and strategy that comes with Magic or even Yugioh just isn't there. I still enjoy playing the game, but it gets really boring, really fast. And the fact that there is a 30 card limit for every game mode is incredibly ridiculous in my opinion.
In all honesty, when I started playing Hearthstone, I lost a ton of respect for Blizzard for a variety of reasons.
Great to be back and part of the community again!
@TacoManStan: Go
Considering how Hearthstone has only been out for around 9 months and has already received 153 new cards, I would not worry too much about the relatively low card count. It will increase with time. It seems far too early to judge it for such an issue.
just found what killed me
It helps when you believe in the heart of the cards.
@Nebuli2: Go
Very true. However, I probably should have been more specific in what I meant. More cards will come with time, yes. However, I think the way that Hearthstone is played is fundamentally flawed. I know next to nothing about Magic, so I will use Yugioh as my base because I grew up collecting Yugioh cards.
In Yugioh, there are trap cards. The absence of a mechanic that is designed specifically as a way to counter what would have otherwise been overpowered cards is something that Hearthstone lacks. Now, I'm not saying that you can't use strategy and a knowledge of the game to counter strategies in Hearthstone, because you definitely can.
What I'm saying is that for low to medium level players (which is always going to be the majority of the playerbase of any game), there isn't enough excitement in the game. There are SO few utility cards that aren't paired with a creature that cards become entirely too niche. There are also some cards that seem to have been made for cheese. For example, the "Doombringer". It has 0 attack and 7 health. If not destroyed, it will kill itself and every other minion on the field. When that card is played, the other player has to focus almost exclusively on destroying that card. Yes, I know, there is an obvious counter and balance to the card: In order to defend it you must have other powerful minions, which would be destroyed. If you leave it undefended, it will die easily.
The point is, the card is a massive game-changer. Even when played incorrectly, if you get lucky, that card alone can win you the game.
I just feel that there is so much about the game that could have been designed better: Terrain cards, trap cards, etc. I also find it incredibly annoying that if you are playing against a class that counters you, you stand little chance at winning.
And unless I'm missing something, you can't choose your deck after you know the class of your opponent. Now you obviously shouldn't be able to change classes, but you should at least be able to choose which deck you use so you don't lose just because you chose the wrong deck. If I'm wrong on that, please let me know.
I just really hope the game lives up to its potential, because there's a lot there. There are a lot of things that can make the game not fun for players who are just looking for a casual game.
Great to be back and part of the community again!
@TacoManStan: Go
Now I usually don't care too much about any of this, but Stan, what you're saying up there is just about the opposite of how Hearthstone works, and you even kind of demolished your own argument. You start off your complaint by stating that there is an "absence of a mechanic that is designed specifically as a way to counter what would otherwise have been overpowered cards". Then you name the Doomsayer. The Doomsayer is precisely what you describe in your sentence. Literally its only function is to counter 'otherwise overpowered cards'. You use it to counter cards like Archmage Antonidas, or Kel'Thuzad. The Doomsayer isn't something that needs to be countered, it is the counter. Heck - it has literally 0 attack. It doesn't need to be counterable precisely because on its own, it's not going to get you any closer to winning in any way. As opposed to something like, say, Ragnaros.
But really though - you want cards to counter otherwise overpowered cards? Try Hex, Polymorph, Equality & Consecration, Assassinate, Naturalize, Shadow Word: Death, Execute, Siphon Soul, Twisting Nether, or one of tens of other removal cards the game has. And then I'm not even talking about secrets yet.
On top of that, this isn't true by a long shot. There are some decks for some classes that have issues with specific kinds of other classes, but this is almost always more of a deck issue than it is a class issue. Freeze mage (pre-GvG, anyway) struggles with control warrior, for instance, but it will likely rape aggro warrior. At the same time, most match-ups purely based on class aren't really favoured either way. Priest vs Warrior? Eh. Hunter vs Warlock? Eh. Rogue vs. Mage? Eh.
And sure, there's a dose of luck involved in some match-ups, and the game in general, but the idea is that the luck is balanced for by playing multiple games. This is why tournament players usually bring three different decks to the table and duke out a best of five, rather than simply playing a single game. Being able to change your deck based on what you're facing is as terrible an idea as going into a match of StarCraft 2 knowing the initial build of your opponent.
It's not that the game doesn't have issues, but everything you're saying up here just makes it seem to me like you haven't played more than two or three matches of Hearthstone in your life. If you want to rant, rant about the effectiveness of aggro decks: zoohunter and zoolock can carry a player all the way to legendary, require barely any thought, and stifle any sort of original deck creation (because no matter how unique or cool your deck is, if it isn't completely zoo-proof, you will lose 50% of your games before they even start). Or rant about the fact that the game is subtly pay2win, since really any half-decent deck incorporates at least three legendary cards that will take a non-paying player half a year of non-stop playing to obtain. Just don't start talking nonsense about an alleged 'lack of counters to powerful cards'. If anything, it is too easy to counter powerful cards.
@Mozared: Go
Clearly I worded my post horribly haha, because Hearthstone is balanced wonderfully. That is why I brought the Doomsayer up, to show that there are definite counters to certain strategies, and then there are counters to those counters. The point I was trying to show is that mechanics that I would have seen in trap cards or spell cards are placed in monster cards (or whatever they're called in Hearthstone, I'm not overly familiar with the game and have only played 20-30 matches), which I personally don't find entertaining.
EDIT: I now see what I worded wrong. When I wrote about the Doomsayer, my mind was still referring to cards that are monster cards that are used for utility.
Also, I'm not saying that those cards don't exist in other trading card games, I'm just saying that it always seems like there's an element of strategy in the game that is missing. I suppose I should stop treating this like other trading card games, and looking at it as it's own entity, because otherwise I think I'll just be disappointed only because it's not what I'm expecting.
I clearly don't know enough about the game. Why is that? In Starcraft II, a huge element of the game is scouting your opponent to find out their build. There is no way to do that in Hearthstone (and there shouldn't be, obviously).
Great to be back and part of the community again!
@TacoManStan: Go
You should be able to identify your opponent's build fairly early in the game, solely from observing their plays - much like the hints you get from scouting in Starcraft II.
The thing is that as far as I know other card games (like for example Magic), these tend to be way more complicated with way more mechanics involved in general. This also makes them less accessible, even though WOTC has taken steps against this, such as specific noob-friendly formats. Hearthstone isn't meant to be a game with thousands of cards and the mechanical depth that something like Magic offers. This is aptly demonstrated by the fact that Magic decks are literally twice as large in size, and by the fact that a Magic opening hand holds seven cards instead of four or five. This is not to say there's no mechanical depth whatsoever, but rather that it's meant to be a quicker game that you play for a few matches in between other stuff. For such a game, I think it is pretty well balanced and the existing mechanics are fairly well developed. It feels a bit more 'random' as there are more opportunities to swing the game on either side, but that is the price paid for the relative casualness of the game.
Aside from what Scorp said about scouting, there are definitely decks and character combinations more effective against some than others. Especially within the current meta. Hunters, for example, practically only play aggressive "just hit the enemy's face until he's dead" kind of decks, even if they vary somewhat by themselves. Seeing you're up against a hunter and getting the opportunity to switch would mean that everyone would simply have one 100% 'anti-aggro' deck in their pocket with only taunts and heals in there solely made for the occasions where they face hunters. That's the equivalent of knowing your opponent is going to 6-pool from the start of the game and thus being able to wall off and plunk down an early bunker. And while hunters are in a pretty terrible spot right now balance-wise, this would be the polar opposite of the current situation; rather than hunter aggro decks being too strong for too little required skill, they'd become so weak nobody would ever play them anymore.
It's not that this idea couldn't ever work, but that harkens back to what I said at the start of this post: if you start to allow this sort of 'you can swap your deck upon seeing your opponents class' rules, you need to give, for example, hunters the ability to play control or tempo decks rather than just rush decks. Which means other decks need more counters to be able to deal with a hunters' new playstyle, and maybe the hunter hero power needs a revamp. And then perhaps warriors should get some more non-control options to play, and warlocks should get more counters. And before you know it, you're playing Magic.
the game is fun and all i just gave it another try recently, but almost pure luck-based. I'm kind of competitive player (played dota before) and that was something unusual but after few matches i see that i cant win every time like i used to do in dota. The game though is more relaxing and not too sweaty so my first post was very biased opinion nvm. It's good game i think, but priests and druids seems OP :)!
I guess that's something I would enjoy. With Hearthstone, it feels like there is too much chance involved. I almost feel like it would be the same as having LoL ranked play only allow for blind pick champion selection instead of draft. You might get annihilated just because you got unlucky, and your entire team got countered.
That doesn't meant the same applies to Hearthstone, because it probably doesn't. It doesn't change that when I find my self crossing my fingers thinking "please be up against a _", I don't see that as a good sign for a game. I'd much rather be thinking "alright, if I'm facing a hunter, the current meta is _, therefore I should be prepared to use my _ deck. But they will be expecting that, so I might want to use my _ deck instead."
TL;DR: It's a fun game, but something about it is preventing me from having any desire to play it competitively. Maybe that's the point? I really haven't looked into it, so I don't know.
I guess that's definitely been my problem; I was expecting Magic but instead got Hearthstone. I'm beginning to really enjoy Hearthstone, but I'm finding I'm getting bored with it much more easily than I did with Magic, even though I didn't play Magic for more than a week or so before I got overwhelmed by the cost.
Also, I'm so used to Blizzard games containing some of the most in-depth strategic mechanics I've seen that Hearthstone threw me off guard. I thought if anything it would be more complicated than Magic (which in my eyes would have been a good thing), and it wound up being the exact opposite. As you said though, complicated doesn't mean better.
Great to be back and part of the community again!