(Cracker’s Opinion) Why I quit Hearthstone, and Should You? · 1:23pm Aug 21st, 2016
Okay, time to start actually saying stuff on here. Let’s begin with a simple little ramble. Mostly personal, but feel free to adopt this if you're writing about a gamer, or a gamer's parent.
I’ve quit playing Hearthstone 
.
Yes, I know. It’s been coming for a while, but I’ve gone and completely quit, uninstalled, don’t have time for this, arrivederci. I play Duelyst now, instead, and a lot less of that, too, oddly enough.
“But Cracker, I thought you liked Hearthstone? It’s a fun game, isn’t it?”
Well, Pinkie, that’s what this blog post is about. Hearthstone should be a fun game, but it’s not, not to me, not anymore. And I dare say it’s no fun for a lot of people, but they continue to play it anyway.
Let’s go over the concept first and see if we can find an obvious problem. Hearthstone is an online digital collectible card game made by Blizzard and designed around the Warcraft franchise. You have nine different classes, each with different hero abilities and class-specific cards, you make decks of 30 cards, and you play against other people.
Sounds reasonable so far, right?
Hearthstone is free to play. You can download it for free, you get certain cards right off the bat, couple of random freebies. Awesome, so it doesn’t have any entry fees. But how do you progress in the game? How do you play this collectible card game, ie: how does your collection grow? Two ways.
If you play for free, mainly you complete daily Quests. Every day, you get one Quest, and the chance to re-roll a Quest. Once every week, there is a Tavern Brawl; a special kind of match you can sign up for and you get a free Classic pack if you win (more on that later). You also get 10 Gold for every 3 wins you score. The Gold you then earn can be spent on packs, or on a Sealed Deck format called Arena, which costs more, but gives you a higher return depending on how well you do.
Or you can just buy packs with money. Excess cards can be converted to a currency called Dust, and you can use that to craft individual cards.
This all looks good on paper, but nevertheless, the game has royally peeved people off for various reasons. The balance is off, some will say. There is too much randomness, too many powerful cards that are basically a coin flip to win or lose the game on the spot and the trend towards making more such cards hasn’t let up one bit.
My objection is to something a little different, and it might be useful in considering other games, as well.
There is no minimum return on time spent.
That’s it. What do I mean by that? If you log in to Hearthstone as a relatively new player and you get a 60 Gold Quest requiring a Priest or Warlock win, hey, great, roll up a Priest deck and start playing. Except that Quest requires 5 wins on a Priest, and none of your decks can reliably do that.
But oh, eventually you get those 5 wins, right? Sure. But all your losses in the meantime are pointless wastes of time. You get no closer to your actual goal.
“Then you should just be playing Warlock instead!”
Okay, Rainbow, but what if I don’t like Warlock? What if I think Priest is more fun?
“Then you’re playing for fun only, you shouldn’t expect a reward.”
Yeah… see, that’s where the major flaw in thinking comes in. Playing the game and playing a match are not the same thing. Hearthstone is closer to a dungeon game than a real-world card game. You have an overworld (your collection) which you improve by going down into a dungeon (a match) and getting resources. Playing the game for fun is one thing, but playing a match for fun is something else. Darkest Dungeon, for example, doesn't stop at the dungeons. Accessing your collection doesn't close the game client. You play a match to win, but how you manage your collection can be to make more varied decks, more competitive decks, or just to play fun decks. Playing the game is not the same as playing a match, I cannot stress this enough.
And playing the game for fun is penalised, heavily.
Now, disclaimer: I’m a collector in these types of games. I like having interesting cards, fun decks that let you go ‘gotcha!’, using cards that make normal players squint in confusion, then wet their pants in fear. I like feeling clever by making tweaks of necessity and turning those tweaks into advantages. I never crafted Ancient of War, but I have fond memories of my budget Ramp Druid running out Ironbark Protectors and baiting out BGH. I'm the kind of a-hole who'll play his Rampant Growths but hold his Excess Manas because he's dropping Chromaggus next turn. Roping optional.
I’m also a F2P kind of guy. I don’t mind going up against people with higher-rarity cards or decks, it’s part of the fun. For all I know, they got them without spending a dime, too. I don’t begrudge a win to people who’ve spent money on the game, that would be silly.
But I do take issue with the fact that they can stop me from growing my collection altogether.
Remember the South Park episode ‘Make Love, Not Warcraft’? The basic plot was that the boys were playing WoW, and this one douchebag player kept killing them, basically making the game not fun to play. And they couldn’t level up, because ‘The Dark One’ kept killing them before they could finish any quests. So what they did is kill computer-generated boars for a few weeks on end to level up. World of Warcraft, to the best of my knowledge, doesn’t work like that. But Hearthstone does. And Hearthstone’s boars are generated by RNG.
If you are a new player, or a seasoned player trying out a new class that you don't have the necessary cards for, and you run into someone with a tuned tournament deck, that person can and will stop you not just from getting that measly 10-Gold per 3 wins, but from completing your Dailies. There are a few Quests that don’t require wins, but they’re small in number.
“So why not play Casual?”
Because even in Casual, wins are the only thing that matters. In Casual, you get the same tournament decks you do in Ranked. You are rewarded for playing only highly optimised decks, and you are punished for playing for fun. If your goal is to make a fun deck, you first need a deck that can string together the wins. Look at any Trump F2P series, he disenchants aggressively and plays one deck, maybe two, throughout the month. Whatever doesn’t fit the mold, get rid of it. Just farm up Gold with your good decks and you will have a fun, original deck within a few months.
Except that fun deck doesn’t let you win Gold, not like you can with your farming deck. And there is the matter of making the next fun deck, so… why try getting the fun stuff in the first place? Consider this: the reason Ranked rewards exist, the reason you get Golden cards at the end of the month, is because without those rewards, there wasn’t enough incentive for people to play Ranked. That’s how badly things had been going.
For me, the fun decks involved Dragons, Duplicate, Echo of Medhiv, that sort of thing (the latter two being rotated out of Standard, but that's a different problem altogether). I enjoy thematic decks, like Hobgoblin or C’Thun, stuff you can experiment with with just one or two alterations. The last thing I was looking forward to crafting was a Malygos, so I could put it into a Dragon Mage deck with a cool twist. If push came to shove, a Reno Mage sounded fun.
But what would be the point? In order to keep growing the collection, I’d need a deck that lets me get wins at a good rate, so I can do my dailies within the time I set out to play. Basically, if I’m not working towards cards or decks that are statistically better at winning, I’m aiming to waste my time.
As for why I stuck with it so long, this article here, on Sunk Cost Fallacy, pretty much sums it all up.
That's all well and good for this silly Cracker, but what does this mean for you? If you’re a Hearthstone player, should you quit? Well, ask yourself this:
-what are you looking to build or play next? Is the answer dependant on win rate or how entertaining it looks to play?
-how often do you play, and how long? Do you plan on playing a certain number of matches, or do you keep playing until X amount of wins? To put it another way: if you were playing a slot machine instead of a card game, would you behave the same way?
-how satisfying are your wins, and how often do you get them?
-how much is your judgment affected by the amount of time or money you’ve spent? And if so, compare it to the investments of a ‘real game’, like Orcs Must Die. One that you (and I) do pay money for, spend time on, and eventually stop playing in favour of something else, to be picked up again when you feel like it. Because free-to-play games have the 'free' aspect pretty central in their marketing, see. If you have to compare the money spent, then you're comparing it to other, traditionally sold, computer games (Steam sales, anyone?)
In my opinion, Hearthstone is for people who are willing to spend time and money on a game that only cares about playing the best decks and best cards. It’s for hardcore gamers who want to win, no matter how. That’s the attitude being incentivised, in every single aspect of the game. Even Tavern Brawl gets milked every week it can be. So if you like that sort of challenge, keep it up. Me, I’ve decided to give it the final pass.
Next ramble: Duelyst! Should you play it or not? The Answer May Surprise You!
Not a fan of free to play to begin with because I like to pay the costs up front. Free to pay sometimes translate to pay to win.
Yikes. I tried to install Hearthstone once, but the process went so awry, I gave up in disgust. Given this, I'm glad I did. I'll just stick to Magic: the Gathering.
Well, I never played Hearthstone anyways
4162869
. Smarter than me, at least 
. Not sure how to feel about that 
4162874
4162940
Heh, seems like I have smart readers
In all seriousness, though, it really depends on what you're looking for. I'm not one to judge people for playing games they like, but a quick look at the Hearthstone forums and the comment sections on YouTube makes me think the game is showing signs of being addictive, and not in the good way, either. So a little vent to clear it up, might inspire some gaming-related fanfics.
4162946 Not really. I mean, I just never got around to installing it is all.
Cool.
That article on the Sunk Cost Fallacy is a terrifying eye-opener on the human psyche. Great read.
4163047
Feel free to replace the mentions of 'Farmville' by other games, like my own choice of poison (Duelyst), or the new hype of Pokémon Go.
It really is scary, huh? To think we can be manipulated so easily...
There's a clopfic in there somewhere, someone should dig it out.
The whole 'you instantly go up against tournament quality decks' is why I quit playing Hearthstone before getting very far. If I have to look up a deck online and then trade-or-whatever for the cards to go in it, I'm not having fun.
It's why I quit playing MtG too, except for Duels of the Planesmaster which forced everyone to play kind-of-fun decks, until they had it stop doing that. I sometimes still play the old versions that they hadn't ruined.
4163155
As the uncles said to Casper:
"We're gonna teach you how to fly the sparrow way!"
-"What's that?"
"A good boot out of the nest!" *kick, drop*
With regards to Magic, I loved that game once, but once you start gaming on a computer, you become more acutely aware of how much more difficult it is to get the stuff you want. Collecting cards is done outside of the game, and that can be a real drag. Not to mention the added handicap of storage space
And, of course, the factor of playing with your friends, which basically ends up with you rating cards as: junk, junk, hate you, screw you, junk, oh geez, junk, and the goold ole' 'Maybe we should hang out with other people'.
Incidentally, Kamigawa was the golden age for me. Ire of Kaminari decks were as worthless as a cereal box, but you could oneshot anyone at the table with them. Discord got nothin' on 'Nari.
4162946 Flattery is always nice.
I found two new digital card games.
One is called Faeria: Has a high emphasis on board state, Because There literally is an actual battlefield where placement matters, including land placement. Also no stupid class restrictions.
The other is called infinity Wars: Turns are planned than executed simultaneously.
Honestly I prefer Faeria. It's not free yet, I managed to get an early copy for free but it will be on the 24th. That game is quite generous on card acquisition.
I never got started with Heartstone precisely due to the microtransactions. Just like me having been a Mac-boy for the longest time, I very much prefer to pay up front and receive a complete product, rather than start cheap and then have to cough up every step of the way.
I'm trying to start playing Hearthstone, but just because I want to play the adventures. That, and tavern brawl with friends. I don't want to touch competitive play with a 3 meter stick.
But, just to unlock tavern brawl I had to reach level 20 with an hero.
I installed it, but never got past the basic quests that unlocked all the classes. Also I have GW2 and Marvel Heroes, much better FTP models, and nothing pay to win at all. Well with GW2 the game sort of becomes about getting fancy looks at max level so buying cosmetic stuff is a little like that, but otherwise not. Marvel heroes just has a big roster of heroes and is good and tempting you to take a shortcut and buy all the heroes ASAP, but you can earn everything but the alternate costumes without spending money.
Also they're good for accomplishing something at all times. GW2 can be a very slow crawl forward at times, since you need thousands of this that and the other thing, to turn into that thing, so you can make a third thing, that lets you make a super cool sword of particle effects that isn't actually better than the much easier to aquire sword that you break apart, but you still constantly make some progress. Marvel Heroes is a diablo clone and each hero is a new class, so you won't be bored but there are times where it's not clear if you're really making progress on anything.
Eh, I fell for the advert for Mean Streets of Gadgetzan, and yeah, I see frustration... People using their eldritch horror cards all to buff the ONE card I can't beat, but I know other cards can... Me? I'm getting too into it now that the new digital pack is out, so... *shrug* Glory to the Jade Lotus, and all that jazz.
You likely made the right choice. I'm just having fun and getting lost in the hype right now. Wish me luck.
4324905
Good luck. And have fun. From the bottom of my heart, I hope you have fun. And if you're not, remember that dopamine trap. Cut back if you feel you should, drop it entirely if you think it's necessary. But do so on your own terms
Me, I'm not one to talk anymore, I've since switched to Duelyst and started playing regular pay-once games as well. I like building stuff, what can I say. Hearthstone didn't scratch that itch, Duelyst... I've toyed with abandoning that, too, but that game will be getting a new expansion soon, as well, so I'm waiting if things change.
4324970 I've been playing this game for free, thus far... I've been in another trap before, though... Final Fantasy Record Keeper. Thankfully, I've learned my lesson there.