Problem Machine

Hearthstone: Because what Magic really needed was F2P mechanics

Recommended Posts

It's related to the mechanics of the draft process in either system. Hearthstone being purely digital gives it the freedom to fiddle with the selection process to try to balance things out: previously this was done by guaranteeing that a few picks would be rare or higher, but to avoid situations where one of your three picks was clearly superior, we now have the bucket system, where cards are grouped based on their power level rather than their rarity. Different classes even get a different amount of great, good, normal or bad bucket picks depending on how well that class performs in Arena to begin with. There's still variance, but there's also efforts to reign it in.

 

The booster pack draft system in MTG isn't based on these considerations, it's based on a physical product with a much greater degree of variance. I'm sure there's stuff going on behind the scenes to make the card selection in Arena more balanced than it would normally be and you still some amount of editorial control over your deck in the end, but I'm still left with the impression that there's a much greater degree of difference to what sort of deck you could end up with here. That makes it more interesting, but also more frustrating for me. Like, originally, the very physicality of this system is part of what helps balance it out: your immediate opponents at the table all draft from the same pile of cards, so no matter what weirdness there is going on, you are all dealing with it together. In this online draft format though, I'm picking vs a bot and then playing people who had entirely different piles to begin with.

 

What I like about Hearthstone arena is that it feels like a much more stripped down format that focuses on the fundamentals of trading, tempo and understanding basic archetypes like aggro, mid-range and control. The way the selection process is balanced between spells, minions, class and neutral cards makes it completely impossible to pursue any specific deck recipe or combo, which means you can still play and enjoy this when you haven't been keeping up with the meta for a while. The fact that drafts in MTG Arena focus entirely on one set really brings the specific balance quirks of that set to the fore, which almost requires more literacy of the game than normal play does. More importantly, if the specific meta of looking at one set in isolation has a few cards or combos that overperform (which players have more space to pursue in the larger scale of the draft), there's no way to correct for that, it just is what it is.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Aha, thank you for clarifying. I didn't know they did some sort of bucket-sorting in Arena now. Of course given that there's no mana constraints or other players interfering with your card picks, variance could be much higher in HS than in Magic without those constraints so it makes sense if they are trying to achieve fairness. Given that you've already chosen a large part of your deck archetype at class selection it makes sense not to allow people too much further control over what they get - but still, it seems a lost chance not to give people the ability to 'force' a certain direction.

 

I think knowing what archetype you're going for, and what your role is in a particular situation in a match is always going to be an important skill.

 

One of my favourite things in Magic draft is trying to anticipate which cards you can safely pass in the expectation that you'll be able to grab them when the pack comes back to you. It's pretty unique among the digital card games. The bots seem to do a good enough job that I'm rarely shocked at what comes back.

 

I think Eternal has the best asynchronous draft format, where you are drafting 4 packs, of which 2 are guaranteed to be coming from the same human player, just some time in the past. This means packs can't wheel, but it does mean that you can get a sense of which colours are free and knowing there's actually people ahead of you lets you make informed guesses about what cards they could have picked over that strong card they left in there for you.

 

Anyway, it's interesting. Arena's my favourite at the moment, for the simple reason that I've just not played enough Magic over the past decade to my liking.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I challenge everyone to a "Garbage Pull" fight. Can anyone beat Bwomsamdi (he was my free one) and The Health To Armor Pala Legendary in 21 packs?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Ouch, that hurts, though I sort of wanted that Armor Pala : \

 

I pulled both Druid legendaries. I kinda like them, but I recently did a rush to get Druid to lvl 60 for the sweet golden basic cards and vowed to focus on the classes that aren't 60 yet (Hunter, Paly, War, War, Shaman) for a while.

 

Other legendaries were Shirvallah as my free one, a golden Zentimo and, well, Griftah... 

 

As much as I like this expansion, what I'm looking forward the most is rotation. So many games that I've insta-lost because I didn't have a DK in my deck and I was up against Jaina, Guldan or Rexxar.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Oh it seems like you got some pretty decent ones! Apart from Griftah obviously.

 

Yeah, I'm still missing more than half of the DKs at this point and they seem like an auto include in a lot of decks. Especially after this expansion. I mean there were some that haven't really seen play until very recently like Paladin for example. But any Hunter deck, and a lot of Warrior decks, need them. I really like the idea of releasing hero cards every expansion.

 

I'm still waiting for the meta to settle before I craft anything, but I'm really hoping odd-mage becomes a thing because I only need to the Loa to make it.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now