The new player experience in this game is horrible

Community Discussion
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I just restarted this game after not playing for several years. Basically all of my cards are no longer standard. I’ve played about 10 games with the starting pally deck (and other core decks) they gave me and haven’t even came close to winning a match. Everyone just has so many good cards. It seems like starting out in this game is a huge up hill battle. Compare this to Magic The Gathering: Arena where you start with a multitude of really competent decks that can actually compete, and its new player experience is just much better. On top of that there doesn’t seem to be a way to get new cards easily and quickly without winning/paying. Again compare this to MTG:Arena where they are just handing you out new decks and card packs left and right for just playing cards of a certain color so many times per day.

They really need to re-evaluate the match making, the quality of the starting decks, as well as the unlock process to make this game more accessible to new players. I’m basically going to just stop bothering because I don’t feel like going through endless losses until I can scrounge together a remotely competitive deck and I’d rather not pay $100 to unlock decent cards to even play.

And yes, I may not be the best player, but I’ve played a lot of MTG and I never struggled this hard to eke out a few wins here and there with the starting decks after staring up MTG:Arena for the first time.

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I have created a new account, grabbed hand lock and is already at diamond 4 after few days with zero investment. Pally is one of the most expensive decks, so it was not a wise choice from your side.

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I’ve seen you post before you deleted it. :smiley:

Like if it was hard to prove something like that (as you question that this is even possible):

https://ibb.co/TYLQCd8

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I mean it isn’t like I had some deep insight into which deck I was choosing, so they should all be decent. Also, I figured a post like yours would be the first response saying you already owned everyone with starter deck, so I call into question what you are saying and find it highly suspect. The fact is that every deck should be good, and the match making should be better at putting actual new players against other new players, not crap starter decks against amazing lists that someone found online and had the resources or money to craft the entire list and run it against a noob.

I get you are a fan of the game, but the new player experience is clearly worse than its competitors and needs to be improved to allow an easier point of entry into the game. Picking the wrong starter deck shouldn’t set you up for such a struggle. You need to be more open to criticizing the things you enjoy so that they can become better for everyone.

Also note, I said new player experience. Not veteran player who made a smurf account experience.

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The trouble is ALOT of games have OP cards, and MtG is just as guilty as Hearthstone. I used to play Magic until I got fed up with the people having the power cards that essentially were just printed win conditions. “I play this, I’ve won, bye.” True people want these ‘I win!’ cards. They’re usually the pretty ones with gold edging, or something like that. But they take the fun out of the game. These days CCGs expect a player to try for the ‘big league’ cards and build their deck a certain way in order to have a chance of winning, but that isn’t fun. The best CCGs I’ve played have had a larger card selection and allowed a player to build jank and still expect a reasonable chance of winning (the old VS CCG, to name one). Toning down abilities on cards doesn’t reduce the fun. In fact, when a player wins through personal cleverness, rather than the luck of the draw, they are much more likely to invest more time in the game. A fact that’s sadly lost on many CCG designers these days.

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Well I know a lot of people who spend way too much money on games, a lot of them do like the p2w edge and I guess I don’t one hundred percent hate that I can play somewhat of a demo mode of hearthstone for complete free, so the model is not completely terrible. The saddest aspect is that titles you used to pay $100 for outright to gain complete access did seem more substantial and they cared a great deal more about the development. I’ve not really seen much meaningful development in games in the past 10 years, I’d even go as far to say there have been much better games in the past but the population slowly all went over to the games that now have pretty much a monopoly.

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Yeah I guess I just have issues with Hearthstones system of match making and the inconsistencies of the starting decks. On MTG:Arena I’ve played with 9 or 10 starter decks and they all have a decent chance to win even against non-starter decks. I also play against other starter decks pretty often. Hearthstone just feels like I’m mostly playing against super OP decks that just have those “I Win The Game” cards a lot more often than I do in MTG:Arena. I’m not totally against super OP cards, if everyone can easily have OP cards, but that doesn’t feel like the case for new players in Hearthstone.

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Just buiid a deck to annoy people. Eat up as much of their time as you can. I know I’m gonna lose, but I’ll make sure they suffer for it. Really make them work for it. Every now and again, you get a few concedes out of boredom/frustration.

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Think the biggest 2 hurdles for new players are these …

  • being smart about your collection

  • not being wowed by the OP card because you can still get pretty far with a f2p deck …

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There are a lot of people who talk about being smart with their collection but then the smartest thing for a new player to do right now is to start in classic, it’s entry cost is far less than standard. A new player should really take notice of what the overpowered cards are though because 1 good craft can often boost your win rate by as much as 20% when you are starting out.

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Started 2 years ago with a New Account, played hunter and ended diamond 3 the first month with a selfbrewed deck in wild without spending money on the game.

After that never came close to diamond again. until last month with Qhunter.

So yeah i think the game is good to New players but if you dont spend money on it after the honeymoon Phase it punish you and you become cannon fodder or those who regular spend money.

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one of the most s*** responses i have ever read

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“The new player experience in this game is horrible.”

As a player who constantly advocated for improvements in the new player experience and who had most of their suggestions incorporated into the game to improve that experience, I would say that the new player experience is much better than it once was.

It’s a CCG, so a new player will not start with all the cards needed to build the strongest decks in the Meta, but between the free loner deck and the Catch Up packs, new players quickly acquire a lot more resources than they did years ago.

Well, it looks like your solution is to just play MTG Arena, but it’s my understanding that MTG Arena is more expensive to keep up with than HS. There is some reason for why you took the time to checkout HS.

I made three new extra accounts (with a collection on each server) mostly for the purpose of monitoring the New Player Experience and the Returning Player Experience, and I am fairly impressed with both. I started doing this with one account in December of 2023, followed by making another account in the spring and another one in the summer/fall. I collect the rewards, before abandoning the accounts again for another 90 days, so that I can collect more Catch Up packs and another free deck. Over year of repeating this pattern should mean that I will soon have the resources to craft any Standard deck that I want after I return to these accounts in February:

Key:
Acct. name, server, gold amount, dust reserves, # of packs, Arena run deck quality & record.

:sparkles:= dust reserves in ~ k amounts
:package:= #of unopened packs
? = drafted a mediocre deck, not sure
:+1: = drafted a good deck
:-1: = drafted a bad deck
:x:= no Arena draft going
:cricket_bat_and_ball:= nerfed cards dusted
:circus_tent: = event completed
:warning:= event not completed yet!
:black_joker: = free deck claimed
:star: = free shop item claimed
:steam_locomotive:= bought the last mini-set
:no_entry_sign:= did not buy the last mini-set
:beer:=Tavern Brawl pack earned

Newer Accounts (all 3 servers)
Do not log into these accounts until February 20 2025!!!

Sa USA 1880 :sparkles: 0+5 :package: 0
Sa EU 680 :sparkles: 0+8 :package: 0
Sa Asia 790 :sparkles: 0+5 :package: 0

DZD USA 2030​:sparkles:0+6 :package: 0
DZD EU 2375​:sparkles:1+5 :package:28
DZD Asia 1735 :sparkles: 0+6 :package: 15

MZ(S)USA 3925​:sparkles:0+9 :package: 17 :-1:
MZ(S) EU 3125​:sparkles:0+6 :package: 22 :-1:
MZ(S) Asia 5035​:sparkles:0+9 :package: 16 :-1:

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why the heck did you guys necro a topic from 2022? how did you even manage to find a topic this old

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I bet they google randomly and then reply immediately on what they googled.