Quest - a good idea, badly executed

[Guest]

I like the idea of the new quests. But it is badly executed IMO.

Let me explain:

Hearthstone gives us lots of different decks. Many can be defined by a specific theme:

Let us look at three such themes as an example

C'Thun decks, Reno Jackson decks, Jade Golem decks

All of these themes gave us quite a lot of potential to build different decks, experiment, have fun.

What did we need for those decks? Not that much.

C'Thun was included in the expansion. Sure, there were cards like Twin Emperor Vek'lor which made the deck more powerful, no doubt about it. But to get a feeling if you like to play a C'Thun deck you didn't have to invest much.

Reno Jackson was avaiable through an adventure - you had to spent 2100 gold (2800 if you wanted to get the whole adventure) or around 20 bucks. A sum you could invest without too much trouble. Again, some Reno-themed decks aquired more expensive cards, some less. But generally, you could get a feeling if the playstyle suits you. Did you like it? Did you have fun? Did you want to invest more to make a specific Reno deck as strong as possible?

Same with Jade. Jade-Rogue, Jade-Druid, Jade-Shaman - you didn't need much to experiment. Again, a card like Aya Blackpaw is great for Jade-decks. And definitly improves the deck. But is Jade unplayable without her? No, of course not.

 

In short: You can try most of the themes without having to invest tons of gold / dust / money, whatever.

 

Now let us get back to the new theme - the quests.

Up till now if a specific theme required one key card (Reno, C'Thun...) you got this key card quite cheap - and it unlocked several different decks.

Quest-decks have one huge problem: Each of them requires one legendary card. Just to start them.

There is absolutly no way you can test the new quest-theme without investing tons of money or dust or gold.

If you want to try just half of them you need 8000 dust. Just to test if you like the play-style.

Personally I opened 34 packs and I was VERY lucky - I got 2 legendary cards. No quest though. There are more then 20 legendaries, chances of a legendary card to be a quest-card are less then 50%.

You need either spend hundreds of dollars or tons of dust just to be able to try the quests.

But do I know if I like to play a specific quests? They sound like fun - but do I know for sure? I can't spent tons of dust just on a to be able to try it.

Why didn't they make one single legendary card which activates the quest for each class? (Like with Justicar Trueheart )

With one card you would have to spent 1600 dust, then you would get access to the new theme.

The way they did it they exclude every player who hasn't tons of dust to spent or who isn't willing to pay hundreds of bucks on packs.

 

Personally I am very disappointed.  I will never be able to experiment with the quests, to get a feeling of them. The new expansion is denied to me. As I said before, all themes were avaiable without too much cost. No longer. That is sad.

(And Blizzard earned tons of money through Hearthstone last year. They made 400 Million in 2016 with Hearthstone. Profit-Margin of over 90% (my guess is even over 95%) -> over 360 Million profit. That is totally awesome, compare that to any other industry! That is proof enough that Blizzarrd earned tons of money the way they did it up till now. With the new policy of exclusion, with the higher pack prices it seems Blizzard just gets greedy as hell.)

 

[Mursilis 34]

I'm willing to bet Quests are going to be something we'll see more of moving forward.  So next expansion you'll get another shot at getting Quests.  Personally I have two quest cards, and haven't played them much at all.  I'm more concentrating on reworking prior, favorite decks first and will get to the quests later on.  While the quests are interesting, and some very powerful, if you don't have one you aren't relegated to some second-tier status.  You should be able to do fine without them.  And if there is one quest you find really interesting, you could just get the one for only 1600 dust.

[Guest]

It isn't about playing the best possible deck - it is about having fun with the possibilities Hearthstone has.

I like to try the different deck types. And those I prefer most I try to make as good as possible by investing dust to craft the necessary cards.

But nearly the whole new expansion is closed of to this approach. You just cant play around with it.

If Hearthstone continues on this path - closing 90% of the possibilities - I don't see me playing it next year. Sure, why should Blizzard or you care - but I don't understand Blizzards reasons for doing this.

[positiv2 953]

I don't see any issue with quests being legendary. It does block you from owning most of them, but it is still quite easy to get one or two, even without playing heavily, and still have dust to make the rest of the deck.

14 hours ago, WedgeAntilles said:

Reno Jackson was avaiable through an adventure - you had to spent 2100 gold

Reno Jackson was in the first wing, which means one had to spend only 700 gold. However, even though Reno Jackson himself was cheap, the cards to make the deck powerful weren't that cheap, resulting in the deck costing around 10k dust, or possibly even more. 

[Keizoku 185]

9 hours ago, WedgeAntilles said:

but I don't understand Blizzards reasons for doing this.

$$$

No general catch-up mechanism for newbies, twice more legendaries in the current expansion and three expansions with (now more expensive) pack RNG instead of two + fixed "lump sum" of an adventure with a guaranteed set of cards over 2017 = more money thrown at them; it's as simple as that.

[KingMe 289]

6 hours ago, Keizoku said:

$$$

No general catch-up mechanism for newbies, twice more legendaries in the current expansion and three expansions with (now more expensive) pack RNG instead of two + fixed "lump sum" of an adventure with a guaranteed set of cards over 2017 = more money thrown at them; it's as simple as that.

You hit the nail on the head.  

[OroNerVoSo 1]

On 3/5/2017 at 4:03 PM, WedgeAntilles said:

I like the idea of the new quests. But it is badly executed IMO.

Let me explain:

Hearthstone gives us lots of different decks. Many can be defined by a specific theme:

Let us look at three such themes as an example

C'Thun decks, Reno Jackson decks, Jade Golem decks

All of these themes gave us quite a lot of potential to build different decks, experiment, have fun.

What did we need for those decks? Not that much.

C'Thun was included in the expansion. Sure, there were cards like Twin Emperor Vek'lor which made the deck more powerful, no doubt about it. But to get a feeling if you like to play a C'Thun deck you didn't have to invest much.

Reno Jackson was avaiable through an adventure - you had to spent 2100 gold (2800 if you wanted to get the whole adventure) or around 20 bucks. A sum you could invest without too much trouble. Again, some Reno-themed decks aquired more expensive cards, some less. But generally, you could get a feeling if the playstyle suits you. Did you like it? Did you have fun? Did you want to invest more to make a specific Reno deck as strong as possible?

Same with Jade. Jade-Rogue, Jade-Druid, Jade-Shaman - you didn't need much to experiment. Again, a card like Aya Blackpaw is great for Jade-decks. And definitly improves the deck. But is Jade unplayable without her? No, of course not.

 

In short: You can try most of the themes without having to invest tons of gold / dust / money, whatever.

 

Now let us get back to the new theme - the quests.

Up till now if a specific theme required one key card (Reno, C'Thun...) you got this key card quite cheap - and it unlocked several different decks.

Quest-decks have one huge problem: Each of them requires one legendary card. Just to start them.

There is absolutly no way you can test the new quest-theme without investing tons of money or dust or gold.

If you want to try just half of them you need 8000 dust. Just to test if you like the play-style.

Personally I opened 34 packs and I was VERY lucky - I got 2 legendary cards. No quest though. There are more then 20 legendaries, chances of a legendary card to be a quest-card are less then 50%.

You need either spend hundreds of dollars or tons of dust just to be able to try the quests.

But do I know if I like to play a specific quests? They sound like fun - but do I know for sure? I can't spent tons of dust just on a to be able to try it.

Why didn't they make one single legendary card which activates the quest for each class? (Like with Justicar Trueheart )

With one card you would have to spent 1600 dust, then you would get access to the new theme.

The way they did it they exclude every player who hasn't tons of dust to spent or who isn't willing to pay hundreds of bucks on packs.

 

Personally I am very disappointed.  I will never be able to experiment with the quests, to get a feeling of them. The new expansion is denied to me. As I said before, all themes were avaiable without too much cost. No longer. That is sad.

(And Blizzard earned tons of money through Hearthstone last year. They made 400 Million in 2016 with Hearthstone. Profit-Margin of over 90% (my guess is even over 95%) -> over 360 Million profit. That is totally awesome, compare that to any other industry! That is proof enough that Blizzarrd earned tons of money the way they did it up till now. With the new policy of exclusion, with the higher pack prices it seems Blizzard just gets greedy as hell.)

 

I Think you should play it for fun , if you don't enjoy playing heartstone , you should not play it... FUN is priority... then you can talk about reaching legend rank , but if you don't get fun playing this , we can call it masochism ^^'

 

 

 

Edited May 5, 2017 by OroNerVoSo

[KingMe 289]

5 hours ago, OroNerVoSo said:

I Think you should play it for fun , if you don't enjoy playing heartstone , you should not play it... FUN is priority... then you can talk about reaching legend rank , but if you don't get fun playing this , we can call it masochism ^^'

The point he is making is newer players or F2P players can't play these decks for fun when the core cards are legendary. If you craft the Quest card for say, Rogue, and that's not your style then you are out 1,600 dust and most of the time these players can't afford to make another on the spot. That's not too fun. 

[Guest]

2 hours ago, KingMe said:

The point he is making is newer players or F2P players can't play these decks for fun when the core cards are legendary. If you craft the Quest card for say, Rogue, and that's not your style then you are out 1,600 dust and most of the time these players can't afford to make another on the spot. That's not too fun. 

Jepp, that is exactly my point. That has never be the case up till now. You could get a feeling if you like to play a specific deck and then invest dust. Not the other way round.

And with the old system Blizz already made tons of money, there is no need to try to force players to spend more money.

That could even backfire, if you try to melk the cow too much the cow can die.

[SithLordOfSnark 78]

This is pretty much the reason I've all but quit Hearthstone. I play to get the Tavern Brawl pack and do my dailies, but beyond that, I'm sticking to other games.

[Caldyrvan 377]

It's been a while now since the release of Un'Goro and the introduction of quests and I'm curious how people (at least those of the Iciy Veins community) feel about them. (Note: I didn't want to necro a topic but I saw no reason to create a new one).

We saw a lot of quest play after the release of Un'goro then it got a bit more silent about them, not all ofc. Lately I have more games against quest decks and I still dislike every game. If they struggle with their quest or have a badly constructed deck besides the quest I get a boring win, if not I get a disappointing loss. Don't get me wrong, I can enjoy games even with defeats but never against quest decks.

But what are you thinking? I'm not asking if they are good/effective or not I want to know if you think they are good for the game and fun? I know everyone who loves to play with themselves to produce a big game effect likes them :D so what do the others think?

Edited September 8, 2017 by Caldyrvan

[Synesthesy 114]

The fact that I can't try some deck without having a legendary card first still hurts. I'm not a F2P player, but neither can I spend as I wish on an online game, so I have just tried roughly half of the quest, and there are some others I would like to try but I will never do, because I don't want to spend 1600 dust on a card that may be fun but it's not competitive at all (like Galvadon).

But it's needed to say that some quest were not good at all, and that some quest are part of a greater archetype: I can for example play discard lock without warlock's quest; I can play freeze mage that is almost like quest exodia mage (and in Wild you can play exodia with Thaurissan), etc.

I think that there was a huge mistake in Blizzard work, and that Blizzard didn't do it in KotFT: they should have given a random quest card to every player as they gave a random Death Knight. At least.

Oh, and I didn't like at all the nerf to quest rogue, as I never like nerf that push things from OP to unplayable. I came from yugioh, so I have a great experience of this, I'm just happy that Blizzard gave me a new legendary from that card. But I play almost only wild, so for me quest rogue was never a problem...

[Guest]

I still haven't played a single quest (since I have none.)

 

I don't like playing against a Mage Deck. If he is halfway lucky with his Blizzards / Icewave there seems absolutly nothing I can do to win.

On turn 5 or 6 or something like that he Ice-Waves and uses Doomsayer.

He plays his Ice-Block and keeps freeizing minions with Blizzard or Cone of Cold (from the Glyph e.g.)

And then, when he is close to death, his Ice-Block triggered, he just plays his sorcerer apprentices, uses his extra turn and with Antonidas has unlimited Fireballs for free.

I can't keep him from playing his Ice-Stuff. That way I cant beat him down fast enough (because I have no charge minions  or tons of spelldamage or weapondamage)

I can't keep him from fulfilling his quest.

And as soon as he has every piece in his hand I can do absolutly nothing to prevent him from doing unlimited damage in one turn.

Because he plays every card in one turn, without chance of interrupting.

 

Against every other quest there are ways I can play against.

 

Example: https://hsreplay.net/replay/YDznjesFEopc7fhiP8Dcah

 

Edited September 8, 2017 by Guest

[FanOfValeera 253]

1 hour ago, WedgeAntilles said:

I still haven't played a single quest (since I have none.)

 

I don't like playing against a Mage Deck. If he is halfway lucky with his Blizzards / Icewave there seems absolutly nothing I can do to win.

On turn 5 or 6 or something like that he Ice-Waves and uses Doomsayer.

He plays his Ice-Block and keeps freeizing minions with Blizzard or Cone of Cold (from the Glyph e.g.)

And then, when he is close to death, his Ice-Block triggered, he just plays his sorcerer apprentices, uses his extra turn and with Antonidas has unlimited Fireballs for free.

I can't keep him from playing his Ice-Stuff. That way I cant beat him down fast enough (because I have no charge minions  or tons of spelldamage or weapondamage)

I can't keep him from fulfilling his quest.

And as soon as he has every piece in his hand I can do absolutly nothing to prevent him from doing unlimited damage in one turn.

Because he plays every card in one turn, without chance of interrupting.

 

Against every other quest there are ways I can play against.

 

Example: https://hsreplay.net/replay/YDznjesFEopc7fhiP8Dcah

 

Yeah, quest mage is not fun to play against for sure.

For me, the problem is, quest is about generated cards, which is unknown to me. Even players with good meta knowledge will have problems against these kind of decks, as third copy of one secret, or fifth board freeze is not always expected.

That's why I don't like quest mage, it is not only about beating it quickly, before the quest is complete, but also about guessing what spell he got from Primordial Glyph, while there are so many choices.

[Caldyrvan 377]

9 hours ago, WedgeAntilles said:

I can't keep him from fulfilling his quest.

That's the case with all quests and I hate it. The only thing you can do is being as aggressive as it's possible for your deck. That is one of the reasons why they nerfed the Rogue quest because it created a meta where everyone finds themselves in the need of an aggro deck which became quite boring because even the matches without rogues were aggro dominated.

The second thing I hate about the Rogue, Warlock (not so much of a threat as others) and Warrior quest is, even if you are still doing well after your opponent completed the quest they got a huge permanent game affect you can't interfere with.

Edited September 8, 2017 by Caldyrvan

[Mursilis 34]

I don't see any difference between the Quests and the new Death Knight cards.  Both legendary and both lead to specific types of decks.  I'm actually seeing more quest decks lately, and they are many times combined with the corresponding Death Knight.  They are a bit rough to deal with, but can see the appeal since that gives the owner two win conditions at least.

[Guest]

17 minutes ago, Mursilis said:

I don't see any difference between the Quests and the new Death Knight cards.  Both legendary and both lead to specific types of decks.  I'm actually seeing more quest decks lately, and they are many times combined with the corresponding Death Knight.  They are a bit rough to deal with, but can see the appeal since that gives the owner two win conditions at least.

Well, that is true for most quests.

Not with mage-quest however.

If he has the pieces he needs, he can do 100 damage in one turn. Without giving you any chance whatsoever to do something against it.

He doesn't need a minion on the board, he does the 100 damage with 0 minions on his side at the beginning of his turn.

He doesn't have to had some minions on the boards for several turns before he kills you or anything like this.

[Hanz39 53]

Against mage you just Secret Eat the Ice Block and lethal or use Coldlight Oracle when he has 2 card left killing him at the start of his turn, that deck need to be drawn until the very end to win the game since the pieces to win are so many is easy he won't draw one of them until the very end.

If you don't tech one of those card is pretty hard to win since that deck is based on not make you play at all and draw the whole time, having 1 Secret Eater seems necessary nowadays since finding this deck is pretty common on the ladder

[Synesthesy 114]

On 8/9/2017 at 0:33 PM, WedgeAntilles said:

 

Example: https://hsreplay.net/replay/YDznjesFEopc7fhiP8Dcah

 

I have watched the replay, and I think you made a mistake at turn 7: you didn't count how many turn you need to kill your opponent (with actual board). If your enemy have a hard board removal (like Doomsayer + Frost Nova/Blizzard, or Pyromancer + Equality) you should NEVER build a board too big. You should always have a backup plan in hand.

If you played Druid Death Knight instead of Bonemare, you would have advanced your board (summoning the two insects) and making you nearer to lethal (with the new 3 damage hero power), while having a good backup plan on hand (Bonemare). With DK hero power + the swipe you had in hand, you would have had the power to destroy a Doomsayer and save your board, then you would only need to survive until he ends his freeze tools (2 blizzards + 2 frost nova, + 1 more from random) while every turn making 3 damage.

 

 

(I'm not the best HS player, so take my suggestion with a grain of salt ;) )

[Guest]

11 hours ago, Synesthesy said:

I have watched the replay, and I think you made a mistake at turn 7: you didn't count how many turn you need to kill your opponent (with actual board). If your enemy have a hard board removal (like Doomsayer + Frost Nova/Blizzard, or Pyromancer + Equality) you should NEVER build a board too big. You should always have a backup plan in hand.

If you played Druid Death Knight instead of Bonemare, you would have advanced your board (summoning the two insects) and making you nearer to lethal (with the new 3 damage hero power), while having a good backup plan on hand (Bonemare). With DK hero power + the swipe you had in hand, you would have had the power to destroy a Doomsayer and save your board, then you would only need to survive until he ends his freeze tools (2 blizzards + 2 frost nova, + 1 more from random) while every turn making 3 damage.

 

 

(I'm not the best HS player, so take my suggestion with a grain of salt ;) )

Good thinking. Your suggestion would have been the better play!