Just started playing MTG Arena and seeing how they do things set wise, it resembles similar to how Hearthstone does their set for both standard and wild, just at an accelerated pace. It is quite dumb how Hearthstone either just ignores or is completely oblivious to the fact that the “Wild may confuse new players” excuse is just plain idiotic.
Yes, understandably a new player will see a bunch of expansions and wonder which packs to pull. But, what I have learned from playing Hearthstone and now MTG Arena is that the learning curve in choosing the right packs does not distinguish itself specifically within the rotated and “in rotation” sets. Instead, the learning curve is choosing the right packs to open based on the existing rotation pool and cards that fit within the format’s meta. You can say that the older sets are to rotate out in a year, but if these expansions contain 80% of the entire meta’s played cards, then the investment of the ‘sooner’ to be rotated cards is still a better investment by far. For example, when I started, I opened a bunch of TGT packs (the newest packs) only to realize they were complete garbage compared to at-the-time heavily powercreeped GvG and Naxxramas sets which made up literally every deck aside from the classic fillers, dragon decks, and Justicar Trueheart.
So what does my incessant rambling have to do with wild packs? Well, my point is that not having Wild packs in the shop is the false approach to the complex issue that new players have. New players should be given guidance as to what packs they could open and how influential it may be, but old and existing player should not be restrained on pulling as many packs as they can before they disappear. A new player can make just a big mistake buying standard packs that have no influence in the meta as they could buying wild packs, so why should we restrict the ever growing wild population to not be able to buy wild packs at all?
What irks me in HS is the tip when finding an opponent “buy classic packs if youre a new player” (paraphrased, cant remember the exact quote) when they are systematically destroying it.
But, on topic, fully support wild packs for purchase in game with both cash and gold. Make the wild shop like wild itself - only unlocked once you have a card from wild - if new players purchasing restricted cards is a perceived problem.
So the reason they don’t sell wild packs is because they’re afraid that people will buy the wrong packs? lol… I’m not sure if that’s very nice or very silly of them from a business point of view. I’m sure that there has to be some better solution than to not sell them at all.
Not sure if thats the reason, but they have indicated a few times in the past that they think their playerbase is “easily confused” to put it delicately. Also, I guess, having wild packs locked to the (online) shop means revenue as they can only be bought for cash.
I think the actual reason was something along the lines of “they want our collections to have value” and “making rotated sets easily available makes them less valuable”, but I might be mistaken, It was a LONG time ago.
I dont care about that crap, I want the format supported! That means (imo) having wild packs easily available for anyone who wants to purchase them.
Every single veteran player know that wild was created to force players to constantly need to buy the new cards and dust their favourite cards now going to wild. The entire easier for new players was a sales pitch perfectly executed and to my amazement been taken to heart by every player that started after wilds release.
The fact that they are spiraling power creep atm is proof that what i said true.
Actually ive been playing a bit of Yugioh which is spiraling power creep like mad,
but HS is slowly but surely following in their footsteps. So i will give you this one. xD
Yu-gi-oh’s powercreep got to the point where cards that were previously considered insanely overpowered became completely useless. Nowadays, there are singular cards that have the effects of 4 separate older cards, all rolled into one crazy package, and they’re still considered to be trash.
Hearthstone has a powercreep problem, but nowhere near the level of Yu-gi-oh. If cards like Sylvanas Windrunner, Emperor Thaurissan and Ragnaros were released onto the ladder again, they’d find plenty of decks willing to include them.
Also: “We like Zephrys because it can reward a player to plan ahead to nudge the algorythm into giving them the card they want to recie- WHAT? A Wild button in the shop? Absolutely not! Their poor widdle bwains would 'splode with confusion!!!”
Yeah i know exactly what your talking about. Yugiohs latest box is the nail in the coffin imo. Turn 1 kills every second if not every match. Personally i think they took it overboard by selling the structure decks and worse putting them on sale twice during big box release periods which omg just drains all the fun out of all those interesting cards that made yugioh their name. Sad really. Made it to legend 3rd month not once using a net deck or even a meta deck. Homebrew all the way. xD
At first, MtG players in average are much clever that in HS.
At second, it is less that a week passed since first MtG:A rotation and coming out of Beta. Give it some time.
I assume you mean the in game shop and not the online one? Well you can still buy the packs…but only with real money via the online one. The other way is crafting. You could use gold to buy standard packs and then dust those to craft Wild cards.
I think it comes down to ‘not confusing the player’ as well. What they should do is if you switch the mode to Wild, the in game shop should change to JUST Wild packs.
Crafting is not a way to gain more cards. The conversion rate is so garbage that you only craft if you absolutely need the card, aka for epics and legs. And most of us know we can buy wild packs with real money, but the cost for real money for packs is a lot and there’s little point in spending all that for a few cards. We want to buy cards with in game currency so that we don’t have to worry about rotated packs being completely unavailable to us.
To me it comes down to a design philosophy choice that Bowser talked about:
Magic designs cards and expects the playerbase to figure out how to maximize the cards and figure it out. Yes, some of those cards have a paragraph or two of text but, in the end, Magic’s stance has always been “the player can figure it out”
Hearthstone’s stance seems to have always been to not confuse the player. As such, the player is kind of treated with kid gloves and as such I feel like HS has probably been a bit hampered by this assumption of ‘be easy’ and it trickles all the way down to UI like the Wild Packs.