Quote:
Originally Posted by bgordon
Blizzard talked about people "consuming" Hearthstone content too fast and them having to adjust. People don't really enjoy solved(ish) Hearthstone metas. Reddit rioted and revenues collapsed after a year of everyone knowing you should just play Dragon Warrior or Shaman if you want to win. I don't think World of Warcraft faces the same sort of existential threat from everyone knowing that Shaman is the best class if you want to win.
Remember Dragon Warrior? That went from fringe deck that VS said secretly was maybe the best deck to the most played deck on ladder at all levels in like a week. How long would that have taken in 2015?
Ok, here's my take and experience on this situation:
I played WoW during Vanilla. I played fairly obsessively (what a surprise) and vacillated between hardcore PvP or hardcore carebearing. When I raided, we literally would read online how the very top guilds did stuff, watched videos they made, and digested their content and tried to repeat it. Mind you, we were very "successful" (as far as downing bosses not that long after the firsts were recorded and stuff) but even we just followed someone else's blueprint, with nearly no variations.
At the time I didn't really think too deeply about it, the issue of copying vs actually discovering **** that works on your own.
I quit WoW, years went by, and eventually I found a new MMO, called Rift. (I suppose I played during vanilla rift, as I think the game still exists, but I quit that game after a similar amount of play as I gave wow) In THAT game, I was apart of a guild/group (it rotated a fair number of times) that were literally solving the content as it came out. We didn't copy other guides, we were the ones in the forefront. It also obv is that when I played wow, millions played wow; at rifts height, I doubt it had a player pool of more than a few hundred thousand. (Mainly because from the very start, they consolidated servers frequently)
In any event, figuring **** out on your own was like 10,000 more rewarding and fun. We actually had to test things out, play things out, and yeah it was more "frustrating", but it wasn't just copying mechanics and taking loot.
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As this applies to hearthstone, I think about it like my WoW vs Rift experiences. IF there was no resource to solve the meta, it would be more like the latter; at the moment, obviously, it's completely the former.
The game would be 10,000 better if there were no resources or stat tracking and people just had to figure out decks on their own. Building decks is a HUGE portion of CCGs, and obv people netdecking EVERYTHING completely robs the game of a huge portion of their allure.
Some people like just copying mechanics. I get that. Some people like just playing strong stuff and trying to play the specific game. But the overall enjoyment of the game for MOST would go up if you were forced to be more creative on your own.
(The only time this actually occurred in hearthstone was WHEN they had hard adventures, the past 2 or 3??? I did them the first day, and tried solving them on my own. By FAR the most fun I've had with this game)