My Interest for This Game Is Peaking an All Time Low

Community Discussion
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So I did quit HS once before shortly after DH was put into the game and it wasn’t really because of DH, it was mostly because I just felt like the game in general was really miserable. I was gone for like 2 years at the time and honestly felt pretty great just not playing HS anymore. I ended the last season at gold 3 which translates to only a few games being played over the month because of my legend bonus from the month prior.

Right now I’m at the point where I haven’t played HS in like a month, not even doing dailies. As someone big on having a full collection of cards at all times, not getting gold and just telling myself it’s fine if I don’t get the gold I think is a big indication of where I’m at for my interest. That and with the reveals for the upcoming set, I’m just kind of wondering what’s going on with this game and free resources on every card you play.

I get that it’s Hearthstone’s direction, but to me a big part of playing card games is resource management and I feel like that’s almost not even a consideration anymore with how often every class has big hands by the end of every turn. Then you combine that with cards that are hugely impactful that have no sense of restriction (this is really one of the things that continues plaguing YGO and a complaint people are starting to have within MTG), and it really feels like decks are super homogenous and what the game really comes down to who has the better draw cards, removal cards, etc that all more or less do the same kinds of things. And the randomness, I am so tired of everything being so random in this game and not being able to accurately account for counterplay. That is another huge issue with my experience playing this game and every expansion it feels like those design philosophies are just being doubled down on.

I don’t know, class identity borderline doesn’t exist anymore in my opinion. I feel like the game would honestly be better if every class had the same type of restriction that death knight has but I don’t imagine that will happen because it would require a restructuring of every printed card. And to be fair I do enjoy Twist because many of the issues with the other formats are not really relevant there, but I also know that at some point I’m still going to need to keep up with a modern card collection once Twist starts rotating to cards being “printed” right now.

Comparing it to the enjoyment I’ve had for other games recently, HS right now is barely even an afterthought and even though I’m on the fence, it feels like I’m preparing to just jump off onto the side where I just don’t do a pre-order bundle, in which case I’m just not going to purchase the set entirely at any point.

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Miniaturize feels like such a slippery slope Keyword. Another indication they don’t understand the text on the card is much more important than the cost.

Wholly agree class identity is pretty much gone

Resource cost? These days if I see say a 8-mana card, I assume it will be played for 4-5

Unless you are a collector, it’s a rotation. Just dust the Wild cards. I can usually make the majority of the decks with gold and dust. I’d wait to see what the meta might be if you don’t want to risk your investment, of course.

All in all, for me, this upcoming expansion doesn’t feel great. It’s neat to see some old ideas made kinda new, but it’s literally recycling. It makes me worried what the next two expansions may entail. I’ve been on break since last year’s rotation, and I don’t see a lot to bring me back. Maybe the Meta will be interesting and less toxic, and I’ll give it a go. -shrug-

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I just wanted to point out a peak and an all time low cannot be the same thing from only one pov. multiple povs, absolutely possible. But from a singular one, its quite a paradoxical claim. lol. carry on, dont mind me.

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Just like Draxx, nothing goes over your head.

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What’s your point, here?

You said you don’t play anymore.

I don’t care.

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Sounds like you are in the wrong echo chamber Mountaineer.

I’m with OP. Standard ranked HS is trash. Money grabs dictate decisions by Blizzard, not good gameplay. And the mechanics are so convoluted. This game has diverted so far from its roots.

About all I’ll play at this point is Battlegrounds. And I’ve played since Alpha. :cry:

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I am pretty much in the same boat.
I remember a time when you had to think in advance aka outplay your opponent to actually hit legend.
Now I always play the best card available in my hand without any further thinking and just hope my opponent wont counter it with some fancy rng.
The thought process in matches leans toward zero because everything is refill - clear - random, until somebody wins.

Ofc you can still think about your future plays if you really want but I totaly stoped doing that to keep me sane.
Nothing drives me more nuts then outplaying my opponent 5 turns in a row just to lose to some rng.

The most complicted thought process from the past months was playing a warlock with Sargeras vs a Reno Deck.
I had to bait out Reno before I could play Sargeras… damn that rly felt like thinking… lol

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How could you even predict they had a reno?

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man i am sad
fought a druid guy who burned his wildheart guff cuz he had 10 cards in hand but he played linecracker/bees!!!/earthen scales for 80 armor during fatigue and played 3 reno the lone ranger copies during the game wiping my board a lot and i lost
i thought i could win if he lost guff but nope i and my deck just suck that hard
was playing excavate warrior

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Im in duels and have been Reno’d every single matchup for the last 6 matches. Thats 2 entire runs of 0 wins to 3 losses. All in a row, all due to one card I cant predict if they have or not, and cant come back from because they get rid of my cannons my hero power and deck is built around (inspire cards and pirates). its emotionally draining to see it as the instant “I win because you couldnt see this coming and there isnt a recovery for you” card…

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Some highlander cards make it obvious, should they be played before reno.
Also you could predict it by the cards they’ve played, if you know the meta decks well enough.
Some Decks play reno without any restrictions in that case… well you cant

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if a card doesn’t generate other cards or minions or reduces the costs of other cards or minions it’s trash, because the value is so immense.

Just look at rogue or priest thief decks and mage discover-a-card decks. They play a TON of “get a card” or “discover a card” or “get a copy of a random X card” and somehow WIN without a strategy or synergy. THAT makes me believe that the cards they’re getting aren’t so random after all.

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Aint no way I can recall anything if it isnt in the history to the left side that gives like the last few actions that took place. Im not even talking about both players, I cant recall what I’ve played or is even in my own deck. Even with the help of the tracker HSReplay, all it does at best is tell me how many of a card I’ve got in my deck (such as the unwanted bombs) or if I have shuffled in copies of a minion back into the deck from its deathrattle or a cloning spell.

so what is obvious that gets played before Reno? Why isnt there an avenue to undo what Reno did? Like when I lose my cannons in Duels to it, or i guess if a lock were to lose the portal sargeras made? i assume just play another sargeras but the cannons werent made by anything in the deck, it came into being before the board itself did. Even if its just random like “return a random thing that was removed from the game to the board” or whatever.

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Your main problem appears to be “power creep” and you say it with extra steps. Power creep is partly inevitable; I mean it’s inevitable that THE PLAYERS will whine if they don’t see power creep even if they don’t know it; they will practically say “the expansion sucks!”(whichever the expansion is) because they will see the old cards still being netdecked.

This needs maturity by the players themselves that they either don’t have or the creators of those games don’t believe they have; in fact it’s kinda embarrassing how some “community leaders” often badmouth expansions with low power creep as “boring”; it’s probably inevitable that players’ immaturity will always cause powercreeping…

[PS in case it wasn’t clear: the players would need the maturity to know that without powercreep: they’ll have to wait for days or even weeks until the community learns to play the new cards well so that they become also viable in a similar way to the old cards]

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Idk I think about where other card games where in their 10 year life and none that come to mind are nearly as obnoxious as HS. YGO eventually would but not until like 2015 where I think things were getting to the point of being crazy.

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That’s funny, I read the op and understood he was quitting the game because of the issues with the game. Issues with resource management, giant combos with no restriction, the random factor, it’s impact on being able to counter, and the dilution of class identity.

Actually reading it makes it easy to follow.

Interesting…you cared enough to post you didn’t care.

It’s just the standard pro company trolling. Report and ignore.

That seems like it would be a great way to

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You seem TCG-fatigued in general, since unlike almost everyone here you appear deeply experienced in multiple TCG games.

Though I wonder: do you ever try to rank in any of them at a high level or just mainly play basic difficulties?

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To be fair, I still play MTG, YGO, Weiss-Shwarz that I play with a Discord group, and Lorcana, but I attended the last tournament for L5R and I’ve played a variety of deck-builders over the years (with friends and at GenCon) and I played Runeterra for a little bit before deciding I just didn’t really like the structure of the game itself.

YGO is much more casual now but in the past I’ve had a national invite and was a top 5 rated match player for like 2 years consecutively back when Duelingbook was Duelingnetwork, I have a SCG top 16 for MTG, and I hit legend almost every season in HS, time permitting (I work a lot and have other hobbies/ social life). I actually spend very little time playing card games compared to other things, I just play them very efficiently since I have a lot of experience playing a variety of games at fairly high levels of play.

My main thing comparing HS to some of these other games, especially MTG, is that there is some space I can play these other card games at varying levels that still feel like the complaints I outlined in my OP don’t exist. In YGO there’s Edison and Goat formats which I play, but I play modern YGO as well and there are a lot of non-conformists in the game that allow going to your LGS mean you can see a variety of decks that aren’t just completely stupid – 2024 is looking like it might be one of the worst years in the game due to price and balance of cards. I am stepping back from YGO as well but for different reasons than HS.

MTG I just don’t play modern but I play limited formats, standard, Legacy, and commander. Legacy is no longer competitively supported and you know what you’re getting into but still feels fairly balanced because everything is so strong and counterplay exists there that doesn’t, by design, exist in HS which is a very recurring theme with the way the game is fundamentally. Commander is just popular and most LGS in my area really only support commander and limited. Standard is almost not supported at all in my area but I play it on MTGA.

So yeah, power creep is going to affect every card game, there’s just limited design space before you have to continue moving upwards, but the rate that it has occurred in HS and the way it’s implemented removes a lot of card design philosophy in a way that makes it feel bad, IMO. Twist I think is one of my favorite thing about HS and is a reason for me to continue playing but it seems like people really dislike the format.

I still think HS is fun to play with friends if you can play cubes, but more and more of the people I play with either don’t have significant wild collections or have left the game entirely. A lot of the ways I enjoy playing the game just aren’t viable and Standard just continues to spiral downwards for me.

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To put it simply, what exactly would you add in HS, as a new Format (or at least new design philosophy in general)?

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Honestly, I think Twist is pretty awesome but I think of what we’ve seen from the format so far are really just slightly altered versions of previous formats. I really want them to Frankenstein legal sets and allow players to play with completely new metas.

I do think the pauper thing is cool though. I actually have played it quite a lot but I think it’s fairly clear that some classes just have way better commons. I mean not every format can hit a bullseye so it’s fine.

Really, I think I want card design to be less inclined to RNG and reinvest time into consider class identity. There’s a bunch of mechanics that were only briefly visited that I think could be played around with and explored more.

I actually do like the way highlander is done in HS. It’s by far one of my favorite concepts. Maybe we start implementing new deck building restrictions like if all spells in your deck are only either arcane or no tag you get some access to some card or start of game effect (changing hero power or something).

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