Hearthstone

[slpnshot]

minion yes, character no.

There's a minion that has a lower mana cost based on your champion health, so yes even then there is some strategy for it.

 

[Rinaun]

I love his rant. "Hey, I am far too entitled to be invited late to this closed beta. Blizzard, hear me cry."

I'm not entitled to anything. Sending someone a beta a whole week before it gets reset and making it sound like they're offering me an amazing deal is stupid. It's great marketing, but it's stupid to me. My intentions for my earlier post were to state how terrible their selection process was. A few friends had 2 keys; I told them to sell over giving to me when this game was really new. I have two accounts with blizzard and each account has every single game available in their store registered. Sorry but if you won't invite people who signed up two days after signups opened with every product purchases, yet you invite 2-3 of my friend's spam accounts he made just to sign up......that's just really bad selection, sorry. From my friend's responses this is just magic with Activision's spin on it, so again I'll still pass.

P.S. if you didn't catch the hints, they plan on opening the beta up "slowly" until everyone who applies gets in, then switch it to open beta. It's a simple marketing trick in that people feel it's an exclusive offer. This game screams candy crush levels of TCG.

 

[lupi]

so, you'd be wrong is what you're saying.

 

[lupi]

There's a minion that has a lower mana cost based on your champion health, so yes even then there is some strategy for it.

then they need to do a much better job at separating the card space from the activating area.

 

[darkewaffle]

I wish you could disenchant the gold cards you earn from "levelling up", they seem pretty pointless otherwise. Or rather, why bother making gold cards worth so much more 'dust' if you can't DE them? Unless you can obtain them randomly somehow I suppose, I've only gotten to open 3-4 'booster packs' so far.

It is pretty entertaining however. I think they did a good job in terms of balancing the hero types while still keeping them distinct, but there does seem to be a disparity even between the "basic" cards and the common "expert" cards no matter what you're playing.

I hope they add some more 'social' aspects to the game as well. Currently I don't think you can complete the 'quests' playing against your friends and ultimately 'levelling' doesn't really seem to do anything for you post-10, so for as long as you're looking for cards (which I think you will be for quite a while) you're kind of 'missing out' by playing with them instead of just getting automatched. It'd also be cool to organize in-house tournaments/arena with a group of friends or be able to play 'persistent' games (no turn timer) with them throughout the day on your phone or something.

 

[lupi]

We'll have to see what they do with the social aspect. Currently they've intentionally had it minimized to stave off "trolling" and such. They'll probably start extending it in some manners but we'll have to see how much.

Adding tournament modes is something you can guarantee will be worked on, but nothing ready for release yet.

The 1 player PVE adventure will be coming in one of the soon(tm) patches, would like to see these as more than one player matches.

As far as new cards, think I forgot to mention it before but when an adventure patch is released they are thinking about giving around 2 dozen new cards while the full sized expansions will see many more.

 

[smackababy]

At first, I thought 2 dozen cards would be a lot, but then figured 2 for each class and another 8 or so normal minions and we're at 2 dozen.

 

[lupi]

The bbig post blizzcon patch finally here:

Cap on daily gold, booooooo
Unleash the hounds seems like it kinda sucks.
Argent and cleric, seems kinda odd to me.
Faceless gets buff, about damn time!

And here comes the ETC!


ur latest Hearthstone patch is here! We’ve included a lot of great features and bug fixes in this update, including the ability to abandon one Quest per day, animations for all of our Golden cards, and the addition of the epic rocker Elite Tauren Chieftain! That’s not all—we’ve also added a completely new Ranked Play system, where you can work your way through the ranks to become a Hearthstone Legend. Check out the details on the new Ranked Play system below, along with the full patch notes.

Ranked Play Details

First of all, we’ve really amped up the visuals on the Ranked Play and Unranked Play (now called Casual) tabs in Play mode, so it’ll be immediately obvious which mode you’re about to dive in to once you’re ready to pit your best deck against real opponents.

All players first stepping foot into the revamped Ranked Play mode will start at Rank 25: Angry Chicken. In Ranked Play, you’ll be pitted against opponents equal to or as close to your rank as possible. You and your opponent’s ranks will be visible to each other as you battle. Every time you find yourself victorious against your opponent, you’ll gain a star above your medal. Collect enough stars, and you’ll eventually find yourself attaining the next rank—Rank 24: Leper Gnome. There are 25 different ranks to attain, starting at Angry Chicken and going up to Rank 1: Innkeeper.

As you progress through the ranks, you’ll continue to be matched with opponents of equal or close-to-equal rank. If you hit a win streak, you may notice you collect more stars per win. However, once you progress up to Rank 20, a loss will cause you to lose stars, so play carefully! Win streaks will also end starting at Rank 5 through Rank 1, so every match will really count at those high ranks.

Once you become a Rank 1: Innkeeper with five stars to your name, another win will push you into a special rank: Legend. Legend rank will be represented by a Legendary orange mana crystal with a number in the middle of it. That number tells you exactly where you rank against other players in your region. If your Legend rank shows the number 300, you’re the 300th best Hearthstone player in your region.

Legend Ranks and Matchmaking Rating

You’ll continue to be matched against opponents of equal or close-to-equal skill in Legend rank using a hidden Matchmaking Rating (MMR). Matchmaking Rating follows a couple of simple general rules:

MMR is gained with wins and lost with losses.
The amount of MMR gained or lost is dependent on the MMR of your opponent.
Legend rankings in your region will only be displayed for the top 10,000 Legend players, so battle on if your Legendary mana crystal doesn’t show a number. Keep racking up those wins, and you may become the #1-ranked Hearthstone Legend!

And So Begins Test Season 1

With all that said, this patch marks the start of our first test season of Ranked Play mode. Since we’re in closed beta, we expect some things to break along the way, and we hope you’ll post your feedback and findings on the forums and contribute to various discussions revolving around the updates we made to this mode.

Every month of Ranked Play is called a “season,” and Ranked Play rankings are intended to reset at the end of every season. However, since this test season is starting a bit later in the month than a season normally would, it may act a little strangely. Casual Play will not reset on a monthly basis like Ranked Play does—Casual Play will continue to match you with other players of similar skill. We’ll keep an eye on things as time goes on and make changes as necessary.

During this first test season, Ranked Play rewards (alternate card backs and Golden Heroes) will not be available. We want to make sure the rewards for Ranked Play are available to anyone who wants to attain them—with your help, we can get Hearthstone out of closed beta and let the game loose to everyone!

Check out the detailed patch notes below, and play Hearthstone!

Hearthstone Patch Notes

General

You are now able to abandon one quest per day. When you abandon a quest, you’ll receive a new, random quest in its place.
New Feature: Recently played Opponent – Your friends list now displays the last person you played against, provided they were not a Real ID or BattleTag friend. If you had a particularly great match against someone, you can now friend them for future play!
New Feature: Players Near Me - You can now opt-in to seeing other Hearthstone players on your local network in your friends list.
Parental controls can now disable in-game Shop purchases.
You now have the option to keep the sound playing while the game is running in the background.
The amount of gold gained by winning games in Play mode per day is now capped at 100. This cap does not affect gold gained through Quests, Arena, or Achievements. There will now be an indication within the game when this gold cap is reached. This cap is intended to combat certain methods of gold acquisition that violate our Terms of Service. The spirit of fair play is extremely important to us, and we will continue to monitor gold acquisition activity closely to ensure a fun and enjoyable game environment for everyone.
Ranking

The Ranked play system has been completely redone
There are now month long seasons that reset at the end of each month
There are new ranks and minion portraits for all levels of play
You earn a star for each win and lose one for each loss and your stars determine your rank
Players who get to top rank of legend and are in the top 10,000 players have their exact region-wide ranking displayed
There will be rewards for playing ranked mode in the future, but they were not implemented with this patch, and will be added at a future date.
Arena

The number of matches you can win in Arena has increased to 12 (up from 9).
Arena rewards have been restructured.
Gameplay

General
All Golden cards are now animated.
The visual effects of some cards have been improved.
Ysera now summons her Dream cards directly from the Emerald Dream!
King Krush now makes a dinosauric appearance when played!
Al’Akir the Windlord now rides into battle on the tempest itself!
Hunter
Unleash the Hounds has been reworked and now reads: “(4) For each enemy minion, summon a 1/1 Hound with Charge”.
The previous version of this card was allowing Hunters to win in a single turn, starting with no minions on the board. The new version should give hunters some fun new card combinations and bolster their AoE ability.
Temporarily increased the amount of dust that you get from disenchanting Unleash the Hounds such that it is equal to the amount of dust that it would have originally cost to craft Unleash the Hounds.
Starving Buzzard is now a 2/1 (was a 2/2).
At some ranks, Hunter was too strong against Mage, Druid and Rogue. This change to Starving Buzzard helps even the playing field against those classes.
Priest
Mind Control’s mana cost is now 10 (up from 8).
Mind Control was frustrating to play against. Players worked to summon their powerful minions and not only lose the minion but die to that same minion the next turn. This change will give you a couple more turns to play with your Ragnaros.
Warlock
Flame Imp’s Battlecry now deals 3 damage (up from 2).
This minor change should help bring the warlock’s early game down a small amount.* We’re keeping our eye on other cards that help the Warlock maintain early board advantage and will make additional changes if necessary in a future patch.
Temporarily increased the amount of dust that you get from disenchanting Flame Imp such that it is equal to the amount of dust that it would have originally cost to craft Flame Imp.
Neutral
Argent Commander is now a 4/2 (was a 4/3).
Argent Commander is played more often than we’d like, so we are reducing its power slightly to increase the variety of cards being played.
Temporarily increased the amount of dust that you get from disenchanting Argent Commander such that it is equal to the amount of dust that it would have originally cost to craft Argent Commander.
Shattered Sun Cleric is now a 3/2 (was a 3/3).
Shattered Sun Cleric is keeping the creature rush decks healthy enough to avoid many board clearing spells. By reducing the Health by 1, this leaves Shattered Sun Cleric a bit more vulnerable while still remaining strong.
The golden version of the Elite Tauren Chieftain has been added to collections of those who attended BlizzCon 2013 or who purchased a Virtual Ticket.
If this card does not show up, make sure the code found on the back of the digital items card found in the badge holder, or sent to you with a purchase of the Virtual Ticket, has been added to your Battle.net Account.
UI

The chat UI has received additional improvements.
Your player rank (icon and number) is now visible in the friends list, the versus screen and your BattleTag in-game.
The PrintScreen key now takes a screenshot of your game and saves it to your desktop.
Custom art has been added to headers for each class in the collection manager.
The toggle between Casual and Ranked Play modes is now more explicit.
The art has been updated for the box and pack opening screens.
Bug Fixes

Alexstrasza’s ability no longer counts as a healing effect when raising the target’s health to 15 and will not affect Armor when lowering health to 15.*
Fixed an issue where Truesilver Champion could trigger twice from one attack.
Faceless Manipulator will now properly copy all buffs on a minion.
Fixed an issue where replacing your hero with Lord Jaraxxus counted as a minion death.
Fixed a visual issue where casting Mass Dispel while multiple global buffs were active was not updating the stats correctly.
Fixed various issues involving the use of Tracking.
Fixed an issue where Fatigue damage triggering Ice Block caused the client to halt.
Playing a minion during Brawl’s animation no longer causes client issues.
Freeze should now always properly cause the affected minion or Hero to miss its next attack phase.
Fixed various issues involving the mechanic of returning cards to a player’s hand.
Minions returning to the board from resurrection effects no longer trigger secrets.
Fixed various issues resulting from viewing the credits.
The cinematic can now be viewed multiple times from the Game Menu.
Fixes various issues where twinkling sound effects would loop.
Using the “<” or “>” symbols while naming decks no longer causes client issues.
The Coin now displays the correct highlight as it enters your hand.
The warning message for disenchanting cards should now appear at the appropriate times.
Green highlights around minions are now updating correctly.
Golden cards earned in the Arena now appear with the correct border on the reward screen.
Fixed multiple spelling and grammatical errors in card flavor text.

 

[darkewaffle]

I like the card changes, I would say they're appropriate in my experience at least.

 

[smackababy]

I like all changes, except the gold cap. I understand they don't want people botting to gain gold, but seriously? I can't (without quests) earn enough gold for ONE arena entry. It is like you are saying "too bad pay us money" Blizzard...

 

[darkewaffle]

Are you really going to earn over 100 gold per day from just playing games? I mean that's at least 30 games per 24 hours (or more likely in a single night) if you win 100% of the time. That's a hell of a lot of playing time.

 

[smackababy]

Are you really going to earn over 100 gold per day from just playing games? I mean that's at least 30 games per 24 hours (or more likely in a single night) if you win 100% of the time. That's a hell of a lot of playing time.

If I was really motivated to do just one more Arena, yes!

 

[lupi]

I've gotten over a hundred on a couple weekends.

Thinking about dusting a couple of these changed ones while they are artificially high.

 

[Ns1]

So when is open beta or when is this damn thing going to be released?

 

[smackababy]

Only Blizzard knows. And if you're some people, by that time, you are too entitled to play the game. >_>

 

[lupi]

was supposed to be before end of the year, would expect by the end of next week..otherwise it won't be till january.

 

[lupi]

yeah quest are working. Had 2 which wanted 5 warlock so did enough to get those 10 which put me up to argent squire.

 

[Wardawg1001]

Matchmaking system seems to be a clone of the SC2 system. Not that that's a bad thing.

I haven't played in a while, but most of the card changes seem pretty appropriate. Mind Control, Argent Commander, and Shattered Sun Cleric in particular were basically must picks in during Arena deck building.

 

[smackababy]

Matchmaking system seems to be a clone of the SC2 system. Not that that's a bad thing.

I haven't played in a while, but most of the card changes seem pretty appropriate. Mind Control, Argent Commander, and Shattered Sun Cleric in particular were basically must picks in during Arena deck building.

I think they still will be. Argent Commander is still a free 4 damage charge and Shattered Sun Cleric is a cheap buff and a 3 mana 3/2. There might be some more value depending on the cards, but I don't suspect we will see those go away. Mind Control was only annoying, but you almost always anticipated it at turn 8 if you were playing a priest. Don't drop a big card you, yourself, can't deal with against a priest.

 

[lupi]

Hunter sucks after the changes. Cleric becomes terribad if you can't use its buff.

Played a pally running pirates last night. Had this epic weapon I hadn't run across before which gives a 1/1 to minions at a durability cost, so the pirates go from 3/3 card to 5/5 with the innate + applied weapon buffs.

 

[imaheadcase]

Wasn't this suppose to go open beta in Dec? Or is they scratch that..

 

[MrA79]

I'm enjoying it pretty well so far. Definitely plenty of the 'get smoked by people with better cards\more money' syndrome, but that's true of any CCG. Happened when I was the young punk playing M:tG against 30 year olds at tournaments, no reason for it to be any different now.

Gotten about 6 packs for free from quests and stuff, so it definitely seems possible to at least be competitive without paying out hand over fist.

TLDR - so far so good, especially for a f2p.

edit - screw whoever played Onyxia on me last night. All I could think was 'MANY WHELPS! HANDLE IT!'. Ugh.

 

[slpnshot]

Well at least Arena gives an even footing to people because they can get cards they don't have in their deck. Lol, got 0/3 last night with my free arena. The dream...

 

[lupi]

up to rank 21. doing quest so not my best set up chars, and rain into one of those damned mages with all the uncommon/rare/epic cards to max their spell power synergy and it was not pretty. pretty much screwed if you didn't have a rush anti-mage deck ready for it.

 

[Chiropteran]

Hunter sucks after the changes. Cleric becomes terribad if you can't use its buff.

Played a pally running pirates last night. Had this epic weapon I hadn't run across before which gives a 1/1 to minions at a durability cost, so the pirates go from 3/3 card to 5/5 with the innate + applied weapon buffs.

A class shouldn't be balanced around one ridiculous combo, I'm glad unleash the hounds got nerfed. The old version led to very boring passive games where the hunter casts nothing at all except creature kill cards until turn 8 or so when he wins in a single turn. It was dumb.

I agree, regarding the shattered sun cleric. A plain 3/3 for 3 mana was already bad, it was only good when it's battlecry helped. I think it was the card hurt most by the nerfs from this patch.

Argent commander is nearly unchanged. Not much of a difference between 2 and 3 toughness, he will still fit the exact same role as before. Still a strong card.

The mind control nerf is a curious one. I always though mind control should leave a buff on the mob that could be removed with silence, returning the creature to it's owner, but instead they just increase it's cost. It still doesn't have a real counter, but it's easier to rush down the priest before he gets mana to cast mind control now. It's clearly a nerf, but not in the direction I'd like to see it get nerfed.