So, I had been playing Hearthstone since Naxxramas and stopped shortly after the Rastakhan expansion because it had gotten kind of boring and I couldn't keep up without paying.
Switched to MTGA but am taking a breather from that too during this Kaldheim thingy (because vikings are dumb) and decided to check out what was going on in Blizzard land.
My impression is that the devs didn't learn a thing. I thought MTG had a rough year with Ikoria and Eldraine but the power creep seems insane. There's still combo decks that waste half of the play time with stupidly slow animations. They are still using random card generation whenever they run out of ideas. Did they really spent more than a year basically on autopilot or am I missing something?
TL,DR: Did Blizzard fix any of the frequent complaints about HS?
nothing changed, it's still kinda expensive to get into, card generation and mana cheats haven't gone away. there's a new class and new game mode (battlegrounds) but it wasn't enough for me to stick around
legends of runeterra though, now that's a sexy, well polished game with good balance, but less fun whackiness than hearthstone. since you mentioned mtg it might be something you're interested in
Yeah I was a fan of Runeterra's mechanics and the gauntlet mode from what I played on release. Was just waiting for more cards to come out since I like to brew janky stuff and the card pool was kind of small for that. Might get back into it.
there's been a few expansions since, in fact one just dropped a week ago or so. also they just added a 2v2 mode which is neat, and a lot more single player content that's kinda similar to the dungeon runs from hs
Short answer: No.
Long answer: The game is faster-paced, more combo and key-card dependent, and less creative/fun than it was when it was released. Just like in MTGA, it's basically impossible to win without the right super-rare cards on hand. The one thing that keeps me going is the fact that the freemium model doesn't require me to go out-of-pocket. I get enough in-game gold / free packs to maintain a competitive collection. Finding competitive decks online is fairly easy (there's rarely more than one or two per class). And as a phone-game, it's reasonably quick to load and fairly stable, so I can bang out a game or two over lunch without trouble.
If MTGA had been a thing a few years earlier, I'd probably have stuck with that rather than this. I definitely like online card games more than physical card games, as maintaining a collection doesn't take up a shelf in my house. But I generally like MTG more than Hearthstone.
and less creative/fun than it was when it was released
That's what frustrated me, the game felt more railroady as it went on. The most fun thing in CCGs for me is discovering an iteraction you never thought of before and trying it out.
It might be a fun phone game if I can resist the impulse to grind for some stupid legendary that will most definetly suck.
It's been a time since I've played, but they added the Demon Hunter archetype at some point 1 or 2 years ago so it may be worth checking it out again if for nothing else than to try out the new class mechanics.
AFAIK nothing else has really changed.
The new class sounds cool. On the other hand it probably diluted the number of neutral cards in a set even more, which would make deckbuilding more restrictive.
Still worth checking at least the basic set stuff I guess.
TBH I wasn't a fan and I stopped playing not long after that.
I got the impression of "Why would I pick this over Warlock if I want to run demons, or Rogue if I want to run combos?"
The 1-mana class ability lets you exploit the Inspire mechanic more easily in Wild. And it's arguably faster than Warlock with life-gain, so you can come out stronger against the control decks like Warrior and Priest without dying to bursty decks like Hunter and Rogue. Definitely has its niche.
This makes sense. I admit I really wasn't trying very hard to figure out how it would be useful, I was already burned out w/ the game at that point.
Did Blizzard fix any of the frequent complaints
about HS?no
