ShadowEra vs Hearthstone

[AnomalousT]

One thing I'll throw out is The Hearthstone forum is simply toxic. It's scary over there. I like it much better here at the SE forum.

[Veles]

Well in my eyes only area where Heartstone is really superior than SE is marketing and media. I mean Heartstone is promoted everywhere. I think it is quite a shame Wulven doesn't support streamers and YouTube channels that feature SE gameplay. A simple shout out about them on news screen in app can mean a lot for their popularity. The more subscribers they have more visible they become on the web and make SE more visible with them. Plus some of them make videos of other TCGs which can help attract more players interested in the genre who are not aware that SE exists.

[AnomalousT]

*ahem* *ahhhmmhheehm* What? I'm a YouTube channel! Or. . . I have a YouTube channel! Wulven you should listen to this Nikola guy. I think he has some good ideas

[Palestitch]

I agree as the only somewhat regular player streamer

[Veles]

Then perhaps certain community menager *cough* Demnchi *cough* or certain friendly troll *cough* GDC *cough* can push the idea to Kyle.

[msaf]

I was testing Hearthstone, and i would say, they were close to creating a great game, but in the end, it is not outstanding in gameplay nor in artwork.

My main impressions:
The gameplay is very simplified, although it is not as bad as it seems at the first sight. The feature i missed most was sacrifying of cards, unneeded cards are serious drawback so there is very limited teching.
Cards are well balanced, on the other hand, with limited features, balancing is nowhere as difficult as in SE and i got even more respect for the SE Design Team.

Pictures on cards are good, but they are small and way too much space is reserved for decoration and for text (being simple game, the cards do not use much text for abilities, being purely digital game, the flavor text is offloaded to a separate space).
Background is cute, but it looks like designed for another game. I feel like they intended 3D game and failed. Then they found they would get positive reviews anyway, so they just pasted 2D card pictures in place of 3D models.

All cards make sound when played, and always the same one. It used to be awesome 20 years ago.

There is no trading but there is crafting. It is exactly like a merchant, but with margin like 700% - monopoly abuse like that would be too mundane to be included in a fantasy game, so they call it crafting.


And for the SE Design Team to note:
Daily Quests are very casual player friendly. You get one quest daily upon login, unless you already have three uncompleted, and it lasts until you finish it (or give it up).

In sealed format, you create your deck once and play until you lose three times. The good part is you do not have to create new
deck before every fight like in meltdown, you get a bit used to your cards, and when you get wonderful cards they are not wast
ed when your opponent quits on turn 1.
In meltdown, one could get a deck that would be winning forever, so i would allow to choose the same deck, say, up to five times. Players will have more time for play, and will be playing with a better deck on average.

The main selling point of HS is simplicity. Unless SE wants to stay in its niche, it needs simpler, quicker "SE lite" subset, because complex interactions of cards like boooomerang will never attract mainstream users.

[Airact]

I don't think Wulven needs to worry about SE being too complex for a looooooong time.

[Junk Style]

heartstone combat system just sucks, i played long time and its just child's play, since its beta, maybe it would change, on the other hand, like all blizzard stuff, its pay to win.

I don't even know what this is suppose to mean. The basic "combat system" is almost the same except in SE its attacker damage, then defender damage except otherwise specified, where as in hearthstone, attack and defense damage is calculated at the same time. Cards having health that is dynamic is the same.

Then again, i know Magic players who don't like SE's combat system.

As for p2w and such, I have similar concerns, but if you play arena and do daily quests for gold, its not that bad. unfortunately its much different for players who are good at arena, and players who are not.

If anything atm, it feels like "pay if you are mediocre"

One thing I'll throw out is The Hearthstone forum is simply toxic. It's scary over there. I like it much better here at the SE forum.

to be fair, any blizzard forum will be toxic. There are literally millions of people on those forums, and the internet brings out the worst in them.

I don't think Wulven needs to worry about SE being too complex for a looooooong time.

True. SE is very complex and it is better for it. However sometimes it feels the complexity is also rigid. Often when I was building an SE deck, especially in regards to removal, I felt like each hero has only one option. An example being if you want to play human mage, squire is the only card that will destroy a an enemy item less than 4. The huge complexity of SE, combined with the card pool and sacrifice system, leads to some frustrating play experiences. The complexity made me feel like my decks were often spread thin, and increased the RNG feeling when drawing cards.


My favorite aspect of HS so far is the card interaction of minions. I really like how different cards can combo with one another. I feel like that will be the key for them going forward, as the minions already seem quite strong. There really aren't any 1 cost 1/1 cards as a base.

[Junk Style]

My main impressions:
The gameplay is very simplified, although it is not as bad as it seems at the first sight. The feature i missed most was sacrifying of cards, unneeded cards are serious drawback so there is very limited teching.

The decks are only 30 cards. Sacing cards, while strategic, just makes SE players carry multiples of cards. If you were to remove sacing from SE, but maintain a 39 card deck, then the ten crystals you have for resources is around the same as the number of cards you sac for resources in SE potentially. The difference is you can only have 2 of each card rather than 4. SE forces diversity with single or doubles of "tech" cards, where as hearthstone a "tech" card would be just an individual card. I find that this lowers the rng feel when drawing cards. It is much easier to remember what cards you have used in a constructed deck, and what you can rely on. This works well with HS's aproach to cards combing on the board with on another.

Cards are well balanced, on the other hand, with limited features, balancing is nowhere as difficult as in SE and i got even more respect for the SE Design Team.

subjective. I feel like the best art SE has is better, and some of the art SE has is sub-par. HS is consistent. You are also completely ignoring the fact that when the card is place, the "card" is removed and only the picture is left.

Pictures on cards are good, but they are small and way too much space is reserved for decoration and for text (being simple game, the cards do not use much text for abilities, being purely digital game, the flavor text is offloaded to a separate space).
Background is cute, but it looks like designed for another game. I feel like they intended 3D game and failed. Then they found they would get positive reviews anyway, so they just pasted 2D card pictures in place of 3D models.

I don't have this sense at all. Some of that may just be a lack of an expansion like SE has. I will say that I am surprised there is no armor cards for heroes in the game, or that some classes have weapons, and some do not. Furthermore, Blizzard has done a fantastic job of making complex cards not require complex explanations. That is not a bad thing. For example there is no need to explain what "overload" is on the card, because you can figure it out with a mouse over function.

They had zero intentions of creating a "3D" game, if by that you mean the card art becoming three dimensional. This would go against a lot of the core design concepts, and would complicate bringing the platform to IOS i-pad and iphone, which is in the works. If you have any way of substantiate this, please post it. I mean honestly, Blizzard has a long history of canceling projects or delaying them before releasing a product they aren't happy with. Hell, they thought D3 was going to work great when they finished their 12 year production of it, having scrapped it at least once, and that was their only arguable "failure" in a long long time.

All cards make sound when played, and always the same one. It used to be awesome 20 years ago.

And that's just false. Some beasts have similar sounds when dropped. Pretty much anything with "intelligence" has separately scripted sound bytes for casting and death.

[Junk Style]

I only play Arena

Your previous feeling then makes a lot of sense. Arena is very different than constructed. No card limit, random cards, deck built on a random draft basically.

I think it goes without saying that decks with specific strategies are more prominent in constructed, for better or worse. Examples being mage stall/burn and Warrior One turn Kill decks.