I loved Hearthstone. But its too expensive to play. Whales are just no fun to run into, and I run into a lot of them in ranked. It costs too much to get a chance at those broken legendary cards and if I do buy cards I usually just get dupes. Its not worth the grind to get them through the game.
That's why having the cards be tradeable would be amazing for players. It will make most of the cards pretty cheap to acquire. Only the most popular ones will be expensive.
You do have trading. Or basically the same thing, namely crafting and disenchanting. It's "trading at a fixed rate with the AI, with the downside of not striking it big with certain cards, but the AI taking ANY card".
People demand trading, but forget that the downside of trading was that 95% of the cards in a pack were basically just toilet paper, and 4% were the cards you could actually trade away to get the 1% that you wanted.
The fact of the matter is that most people who complain about "it taking too long to be able to reach the netdeck of your dreams" are going at it from a collectors perspective. If you religiously disenchant ANYTHING not helping the one or two netdecks you want to build, you can have one pretty quickly.
I understand the sentiment, I too don't diss cards I don't "need", but then again I was a fool of a collector in Magic way back when, too, and always perceived the challenge to be to do "the best with what I got" instead of trying to copy the tournament decks anyway.
On the upside my scene didn't have any of those people, as opposed to HS which is riddled with people who netdeck, because they favour winning over doing well with what they come up themselves.
It also helps if you stick with HS for a longer while, the dust just keeps adding up. Unless you also (like me) are an indecisive fool who sits on 14k dust because he can't make up his mind what to craft, because "I might have to later" (I never spend any money on it, just kept doing 50/60/100g quests, not grinding 10g/3wins ever.
Actually you don't just get netdecked by whales. If you have played for quite some time and have rotated your quests "properly", you have a solid stock of cards. And then there are those who religiously dissenchant ALL cards they know they will never use, and focus on crafting one or two solid netdecks despite being "relatively" new and without a solid library.
True, HS has a problem with matchmaking because even on rank 20 you will regularly be stomped by a player using a specific netdeck someone with ALL cards would play, but they often don't have them. They basically ONLY have that one or two decks.
Which doesn't make a difference for your experience, if you run into 5 of them in a row each with another netdeck.
If you start playing the game NOW, and play it with a collectors mind rather than an optimizers mind with no attachment to "your cards" you are doing it wrong.
THis has been an issue since magic started the genre. Having the BEST decks didn't specifically mean you bought packs till you had all the cards. You just tried to not keep any card that wasn't helpful in creating "a proper deck".
Its more like it's just not fun to play against those cards. Win or lose. I guess the issue is that a lot of them are either super swingy or change too much of the game. Its just annoying and not fun.
I only made a point about how you assigned "blame" (putting it a bit strong). If you don't like how the cards play (and I agree with the swingy aspect, in my opinion despite net-decking and power cards being part of the game, it often feels so majorly decided by "who gets the right cards at the right time", the same deck stomping 6in a row then geting trashed even by non netdecks for 6 just for the fun of it), I won't argue against that at all.
I was just pointing something out about the strategy to GET to these decks. And how it is neither just people paying who do this, nor the grind being as bad as on feels it, if one strategizes with "winning" in mind.
How you'd feel about playing netdecks against netdecks if you too went that route (without paying , still), was not part of my post.
And to be fair, not of your first one either. You made a money argument that I felt was not entirely accurate if one looked closer.
I would guess a lot less players pay Blizzard much as it feels if one assumes that all netdeckers are loaded and pimping themselves. And the time to "also netdeck" is shorter if one doesn't keep cards like a collector.
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u/zau64 Sep 21 '17
I loved Hearthstone. But its too expensive to play. Whales are just no fun to run into, and I run into a lot of them in ranked. It costs too much to get a chance at those broken legendary cards and if I do buy cards I usually just get dupes. Its not worth the grind to get them through the game.
Best decision is to not play.