Actually not really. Charge was removed because of player “feels”.
If you want to talk lack of interaction, direct damage spells and battlecries are less interactive than taunts, since spells ignore taunts while charge doesn’t. Battlecries at the time also didn’t have to worry about okani or objection secret, whereas explosive rune and freezing trap existed for longer that could trip up a charge. Heck, charge would trigger ice barrier whereas a nuke spell wouldn’t and that could mean missing lethal.
So yeah, charge is actually quite interactive compared to a lot of other things.
But players just didn’t “feel” good dying to charge. That and maybe the devs actually did want to create a category of minions can trade immediately (up until that point this was mostly the job of spells and weapons), but not hit face immediately.
Game has been out for 10 years. We are never getting the kind of interaction people are crying about. They don’t print disruption. The best disruption we ever had was Theotar and we will never get anything near that good ever again. The wait and see and counter after the fact approach is way too slow. This game will never reach the level of interaction people seem to want out of it and if they do start printing disruption at the level needed for that interaction people will start crying about that disruption robbing them. No matter what designs Blizzard comes up with they can’t win. People are looking for a game that isn’t Hearthstone and Hearthstone can never become that game.
99.99% of Hearthstone players strongly agree with this. The weird part is you acting like they don’t.
There’s like a two digit number of people worldwide who spend $500+ on Hearthstone per year. About one in ten thousand monthly players. They very nearly do not exist. And it would be crazy to honestly believe that even two people on this forum paid even half as much each.
I don’t have hard data for this but I suspect it’s pretty accurate.
Hand buff Paladin isn’t bumping yetis. To make it into a bumping yeti style deck you would need to0 remove the hand buff part and change all the minions into no text vanilla minions.
Something being played onto the board and immediately hitting you in the face with no chance for you to react or answer back. 0 chance to interact with what your opponent did. The feels literally stem from lack of being able to interact.
The feels are just the symptom, the actual cause being lack of interaction.
Battle cry and spells do also lack interactivity, i agree. but those cards are often (or should be) designed to not be overly egregious and limited in what they can do.
It’s easy to limit high burst damage spells to only hit minions and not allow it to go face. Or if it can go face it usually has some long prerequisite or drawback. For instance Climactic Necrotic explosion CAN be huge burst but you have to build an entire gameplan to get it to that point. They purposely made it undiscoverable so people couldnt just randomly create one and kill you out of nowhere. They created checks and balances to keep the card interactive and fair.
As for battlecrys, they are usually very specific 1 time on play effects. Novice engineer just draws a card. As the opponent does not being able to stop your opponent drawing a card with NE feel uninteractive? Not really. Its when the battlecrys allow for broken things to happen or create uninteractivity that they become an issue.
For instance the new brann is not a 1 time effect. Its a permanent effect that once played cannot be undone. It isnt a 1 turn only effect.
Denathrius would just otk you out of nowhere which is more of a denathrius power issue than battlecry issue
With The TNT warrior legendary, while the battlecry itself doesnt do anything, the TNTs that then destroy a card in the opponents hand deck and board are uninteractive. It isnt the battlecry thats the issue. Its the stupid TNTs that offer no way to stop them.
It’s always the problematic cards that break the normal rules. Most battlecrys are fine. Most spells are fine. Its just when things like tentacles casting ‘10 dmg summon a 10 drop’ over and over it becomes an issue
Down to 0, id advise everyone to do the same.
I skipped last expansion completely. I just came back crafted a couple key legendaries and am able to play any of the top decks cus they just play themselves. Already had 95% of the plague DK package from 9 months ago so that was basically a free deck to pick up. Already had the odin deck from a year ago just needed brann who was in the miniset (so 2000 gold easy) and the tnt guy. I literally cba to craft DH because i think that deck is beyond disgusting
Buying Expansions are pointless when you cant play 90% of the cards. How much of whizzbang actually gets used rn? You spend $150 on pre purchase bundles for 90% to be useless. Only 2-3 classes are playable. Most legendaries are useless. Just craft what you need. They’ll eventually nerf those top classes at that point disenchant for full dust refund and wait to see what next pops up and craft that. No point trying to play anything but top meta decks
Also why spend so much money when some kid can come along craft a couple cards to make aggro DH and completely roll you with no skill? Just copy him and craft a couple cheap cards and play aggro DH or brann warrior or plague DK.
No reason to buy the tavern pass when the paid version is just cosmetics. All the gold, packs and free cards are on the free track
Regarding the whole “interactivity” argument, here’s what I think.
I would describe your thinking as “scissors wants to illegalize rock, make everything paper.” We get it, you want to play reactivate cards and always answer whatever your opponent plays. But if everything is easily answerable then you’re going to answer it and win. There need to be threats where there is no reactive answer at all, and the only way to counter it is to proactively reduce your opponent to zero health before they get a chance to play their wombo combo. Then you have a balanced, paper rock scissors relationship. Aggro beats combo, combo beats control, control beats aggro.
So the “uninteractive” is not breaking the rules, it is serving the necessary function of countering decks that focus heavily on removal. This has always existed. Back in Classic we had Mages stalling with Ice Block, halving hero health with Alexstrasza and finishing with Frostbolt, Ice Lances and Thalnos. Charge was in Classic. What you are rebelling against is not some new thing, but the fundamental structure of the game itself, something that you only think is new because you didn’t understand what you were playing when you started.
If you can’t kill an opponent before they play Brann and seven Tendrils, you probably deserve to lose.
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Also 95% of Hearthstone players spend $0. Not $60, not $20, zero.
I’m sorry, I thought when you said bumping yetis, you were just exaggerating and not beating up a strawman. Maybe I was mistaken.
Like come on dude, maybe bots and literally brand new accounts would have to run those cards, but pretty sure you can get packs and start messing around beyond what you describe within like 30 minutes of starting a brand new account.
You can also say the same for charge. It’s usually the same few charge cards that are problematic (leeroy, maybe stonetusk boar in a combo, warsong commander which enabled charge). On the other end there have been some pretty meme/bad chargers, like the stormwind knight 4 mana 2/5. There was some hog riders who only got charge in some specific situation.
They could have just targeted those specific cards (which they did with WSC, leeroy was nerfed, previously it was like 4 mana), but no, they all but purged charge from the pool or changed them to rush.
But then they went ahead and introduce other forms of non-interactivity. So no, charge wasn’t removed because of non-interactivity. It’s a feels decision. They felt like charge should go away for a while so people can play with other non-interactive things for a while.
The paid version is not just cosmetics. It also includes a diamond legendary, 4 epics and 2 golden packs and the 35% boost. If you play and get around 235 on the track at the end of the season it basically paid for itself.
Wish people would stop trying to rewrite history …
United in Stormwind brings about strong opinions but has as many enjoyers as haters.
Data doesnt lie ,its one of the past recent sets with the most engagement from the player base, even its most rabid streamer haters like Zeddy cant understand why it’s one of their most played expansions…
I would extremely disagree with that being my level of thinking. That is literally what the current game is like and it sucks. Its currently rock paper scissors.
DK > warrior > DH > DK > warrior ……
Thats the game people.
Your opponent plays highlander warrior, you better be playing plague DK to disrupt their brann and reno or you just lose.
If they’re playing aggro DH gg you lose cus your deck is in it for the long game whereas they win on turn 4 with weapon window shopper and insane mana cheating big demons
Then if you want to beat aggro DH you need to play highlander warrior and just gain massive armour early to then wipe their boards with constant removal.
Thats how the game works. You need to play the rock into the scissors if its the paper you lose by turn 1
I am literally currently forced to play plague DK because if i dont its just free branns and reno every game. I HAVE to play plague DK to counter stupid warrior decks. If i try to play any of my other decks its just brann and then stupidity ensues. I dont want to play against this stupid warrior scam rubbish or have to stupid plague DK into it which has been around 9 months. I wanna play new stuff and its just the same old trash
That is not healthy design lol. You cant choose your opponents nor swap what kind of deck you are. So if you are control and the enemy deck is aggro there is literally no point playing that game out with your philosophy.
That is bad game design
You should always have ways to interact and play into your opponent. It shouldnt just be ‘I picked rock you picked scissors i win’
THATS TRASHHH & UNINTERACTIVE
This is not bad design. You can’t have something do everything all at once equally well. Thats how you end up with tier 0 decks with 75%+ win rates and 1 deck metas. If you matches to not be Rock Paper Scissors you need to do something other than Best of One and have some kind of side boarding so that games 2 and 3 you can shore up weakness or further exploit your strengths against the opponents deck,
Every action you make affects your opponent’s decisions. That is interaction. Just because the interaction is more subtle and complex than trading down Zoo boards in classic doesn’t mean it isn’t there, and you definitely don’t need to be able to make plays during your opponent’s turn in order to interact with them. The argument from players saying that want to INTERACT is usually actually them wanting to REACT. Just because a card doesn’t let you react to it before it kills you does not mean you don’t get opportunities to interact with your opponent and stop them setting it up throughout the game. Hit your opponent in the face more. You’ll be surprised how often that interaction stops them from making the play they want.
The fact is, the meta has never been as good as it is now, but that can’t last.
You have 7 classes all battling for tier 1 position, and the meta changes on a daily basis. The thing is, couple of decks are broken and once that’s fixed, we’re back to rock-paper-scissors
It’s a creative chaos. You should embrace it while it lasts. Anything goes.
The more extreme you can build your deck, the more fun you’ll have
I mean, I’m losing mostly against Aggro Zarimi priest, Aggro Zarimi Druid (yep, that’s a thing) and aggro pain warlock which literally almost kills itself to kill you
Obviously we also have OTK shaman which kills you turn 5, sometimes 4 (unlucky, go next), Shopper DH, a one-dimensional braindead 55% winrate deck and Wheellock which is getting stronger and stronger, and each one of them is getting dealt with, albeit too slowly for my taste.
Too add to this. REACTING is often way too slow in Hearthstone and just leaves you in a postion of playing perpetually behind, You don’t win games of Heathstone by always being 2 step behind whatever your opponent is doing.