I have played to 100 wins with a modified spelltacular deck having spent nothing and opened about 20 of the expansion card packs from arena runs. After reading some of the forum and reddit to understand how the game works, there are a few things I noticed.
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This is a pay to win game. I have seem arguments that spending does not get you wins and that’s false because you aren’t going to see legend without being very good at the game or paying for cards.
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This is not free to play. To call it that is using semantics, it is actually free to try. It reminds me of demo game CDs that would come with PC gamer magazine where you could only play one feature or level and the other choices were grayed out you couldn’t click on them. If you aren’t paying to play, you can only realistically use one class out nine “competitively” and even then you will hit a pay wall and be destroyed by the spenders you face. I put competitively in quotes because you it’s not really competitive when you are playing against the matchmaking and not other players (see my next point). Being able to enjoy 1/9 of the content is a demo, it is not the game.
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The matchmaking is broken and probably intentionally since this is a 6 year old game. I was able to cruise up the ranks to gold 7 with at least an 80% win rate. Once I get to that level matchmaking puts me against libram paladins, evolve shamans and demon hunters who use seemingly endless twin strikes to do 10+ face damage by turn 4. I have no chance against these players with the card options available to me. But then something interesting happens. After being sent back to gold 10 facing overpowered opponents, I will go on a win streak to make it back to gold 7 or 8 and then be sent back to 10. This happens over and over I am on a streak either winning or losing which is horrible matchmaking. I am assuming that the reason the developers do this is because it provides an ego boost to paying players to be able to destroy an opponent that doesn’t spend. Matchmaking should be done by deck strength so if you are skilled in the game you can advance, not matchmaking makes it impossible to advance because you are used as cannon fodder so another player can feel like they got something for their money.
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Eveyone plays the same. The players that spend are using the same decks that I am assuming they got online making the same plays and combos every turn. The skill involved seems to be how much money you are willing to spend which will get you more cards. When I lose (which is 75% to the 3 decks that I mentioned), I might as well be playing the same opponent over and over. I have seen it defended everyone doing the same thing and it’s laughable. That would be like playing modern warfare and being able to buy top player’s skill as an auto aim script and then thinking that you are good because you’re pulling the trigger. You’re not doing anything special that couldn’t be taught to a child it is like playing against poker bots that profit by strictly playing the odds. I don’t know where skill is supposed to come into play here because you aren’t responsible for your own wins.
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That brings me to my next point that decks are overpowered. What exactly is the reason for the massively OP libram, DH, etc decks? The only thing I can think is that it is the developers way of trying to make paying players feel special or cool by using gimmicks and novelty combos, and in turn try to force others to spend to counter them. You should be insulted they are pandering to you selling an “ooh ahh” effect instead of an actual strategy game that involves thinking.
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It’s not worth the money. First of all this is a phone game, even if you are playing it on your computer it is an Adobe flash game like I used to play for free all the time. It has limited production values, game mechanics, game modes, and horrible matchmaking. I am used to spending $60 on a compete game which is an immersive interactive experience I can play on a home theater system for months or years. I can’t comprehend why you are paying hundreds of dollars a year for this game when I got thousands of hours of interactive fun playing MW, fight night, NHL etc for $60 and a few map expansions at $10 each. Do you not have a concept of the value of a dollar, the value of a gaming experience, or are you just not a skilled video game player so you need a game that has cookie cutter mechanics that anyone can win if they spend enough money? I’m thinking it is the last one. The arguments are of course that you are paying for your time spent and if you enjoy it then it is worth it but if this is the most economical fun you can have in a video game then you have my sympathy.
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This is a flash game, it isn’t a collectible hobby, which is an argument I have seen people make. I have magic the gathering cards from 20 years ago that are worth at least hundreds and maybe thousand of dollars right now. You can’t trade or sell your “collections”, which at least you can do in the magic online game and blizzard even admits it is because they want to keep the profit for the company. They admit to being greedy and cheating you and you seem to have no problem with it. Just please don’t compare this game to physical collections of cards that people have which appreciate in value and can at least be traded.
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The extra modes are garbage. After 10 arena runs I made a profit, but barely, and the profit was probably in dust not in gold. Even with a slight profit there is a huge time investment to finish those runs so unless your time is worth nothing to begin with (like mine) most players are better off just buying the packs and not wasting hours solely to contribute to player demographics for when blizzard gives an investor report.
Battlegrounds is even more cookie cutter than the main game, there is a formula to apply to every turn and that is all the players who win are doing. Again as someone who actually has skill in video games this is not fun to me. I do not need or want a crib sheet telling me exactly how I need to play so I can win. Does winning mean that much to you that the sense of satisfaction is actually worth the time you are wasting doing basically nothing? This mode is so formulaic to me that I consider it garbage.
Duels I am not even wasting my time on. When it is free there are no rewards, and why am I going to pay for what is basically arena but without the equalizer of a random deck pool? There is no chance I am going to waste game currency to play my weak cards against paying players.
Tavern brawl is actually fun and a mode that F2P players can do well at if they are good at creating a strategy around the weekly gimmick. Of course since it is accessible to F2P, it gives you no rewards and does not even contribute to experience so there is no reason to play. This is again because of greed and making sure to water down the free experience as much as possible.
- The game is greedy. There is no point in me spending $5-50 to enhance my experience because I will get nothing for my money. I opened 20 packs and got a couple of good cards but I absolutely would not spend $40 on them or whatever the cost. There is nothing significant I can get for $20 one time which is what a game like this should be worth and which can get you a lot in actual free to play games. If you want to be able to win significantly more or play several decks you need to spend probably $100+ and I am just guessing. My time also seems to be worth nothing because there is nothing I can get for myself by grinding out the hours. You get gold from experience but let’s face it without that there would be zero incentive for a F2P to play and there is not one extra beyond that. One of the main benefits of a F2P game is you are supposed to be able to invest time for gain and that element is completely lacking here. And like I already said even Arena mode is rigged to keep it from being profitable unless you are some kind of prodigy at the game or have an encyclopedic knowledge of the card pools and what cards to pick and how to play them.
I would not even be playing the game right now if I wasn’t “lucky” enough to not have logged in for almost a year so was given the free deck and increasing the gold from 10 every 3 wins has made it worth it to grind out the levels. That is not some amazing feat of generosity on blizzard’s part, it is because they were so absolutely cheap to begin with that they needed a way to incentivize new players. That and because they likely are planning for the competition they will be getting from MtG arena which was supposed to be out at this time and has gotten pushed to early next year. I’m sure it isn’t a coincidence blizzard made the game slightly more rewarding at exactly the same time they were about to get their only major competition on mobile.
That brings me to the silver lining of this whole post, which is laughing at blizzard for being so greedy that they are unable to balance profit with growing the player base. The game is old, but that means nothing on mobile because it is not like a new system is coming out or even like graphics and game performance updates are expected ever. My understanding is that they have lost profit year after year even though the game is one of the prominent app store offerings. The game is fun enough when you aren’t losing to a gimmick that they should have been able to grow the community more as well as profits but they are too concerned with squeezing every possible dollar out of whoever is willing to pay. They are now basically milking only who is already financially invested and throwing good money after bad; they have cut themselves off completely from new players in my opinion with how expensive it is to be relevant in the game.
Blizzard used to make good games that I enjoyed like Diablo, warcraft, starcraft and after they hit gold with world of warcraft seem to have become this disgusting profit driven entity instead of an innovative quality game studio. They are only capable of doing this because you are willing to give them your money for it which again I can only imagine is because you have no concept of a video game’s value or you like gamed but are bad at them. You don’t have twitch reflexes, hand eye coordination, can’t strategize etc so you want a methodical game experience where you can pay more money for better results. Either way you are being ripped off and it is only possible because you allow it, blizzard makes their decisions based on how much money they can con out of you that’s the only real game being played is how much can they steal from you?
But like I said they are reaping what they sow by dripping greed they have cost themselves double digit annual growth rates and tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of dollars. I also believe that there is a special place in the afterlife for people like the developers and executives who are concerned only with squeezing as much cash as possible from people who were already financially invested before you tripled how much they had to spend to stay current. So blizzard you are doing the wrong thing but you have also cut off your nose to spite your face in the process and for that I laugh at you.