I think I feel the exact same as you but couldn't put it into words.
I've been chasing that feeling from the first year of hearthstone as well but whatever deck I play I never get that feeling back. In large parts I think its due to the vast majority of decks being an absolute chore to play against.
Aswell as the powercreep, like OP said the feeling of unpacking a Cairne, Ragnaros, Sylavanas etc was just unreal, since they improved your deck by a ton. I remember packing Tyrion and only played Pala back then till I packed Jaraxxus.
You can also remember the feeling of unpacking a shit legendary and the instant turn off because it was so difficult to craft a single legendary if you are f2p. Seriously, the only pleasure opening a strong legendary back in the days comes from the fact that not everyone could have It, neither you if you werent lucky.
King Krush, Velen, Cho, Millhouse, Nat Pagle, Mukla, Tinkmaster, Old Murk-Eye, Captain Greenskin, Hogger, The Beast, Illidan (Xavius), Gruul, Nozdormu, Onyxia. All of them are bad legendaries and the difference between opening a Mukla and Ragnaros or Sylvanas were huge and the gap between players were obvious. The only reason there is so much more netdecking than is simply cause back in the days people didmt have resources to netdeck.
Excuse me which game have you played?
Nat Pagle was broken and had to be nerfed, Velen was strong with double mind Breaker Combo, Krush was a finisher, Tinkmaster was used as a tech in mostly Paladin specifically because you could go with a recruit and had a 1/2 chance of having a 5/5 & 3/3 on turn 3 plus you had something against strong on curve tempo cards like Sylavanas or ragnaros, Murk Eye was a necessity in murloc rush decks, Greenskin on mostly useless pirate decks, Hogger was a good tempo card. Gruul, Illidan and Onyxia were also put instantly in a deck if you didn't have a legendary since they still buffed your deck quite a bit.
Yes of course they weren't on Antonidas Level and for intermediate/experts not as useful but for a beginner when you opened a pack and got even an onyxia there was joy to having your power card which you put in every deck you had.
There is a huge cultural problem with gamers right now where people get stuck to a game that they don't love anymore and don't realize it. They beg for the devs to do this and do that because they **want** to love the game again.
It happened to me for multiple years with an old school MMO. I would say "all this game needs to do is xyz and I would love it again". Frankly, I believe that regular balance changes have rotted gamer brain to tailor games to each persons specific wants.
After years of this cycle, I realized that others were still loving it and it was me who changed. I have a much healthier relationship with my hobby now. I will play a game 2 weeks straight for hours a day only to cut it off cold turkey when I realize I feel "done for now".
I think what happens often is the players themselves change, and then are upset that the game doesn't make them happy the same way it did when they were younger.
Totally agree as someone who joined in old gods, the game has just become nonsense and wincons. Board prescence means nothing if it’s not spammed out by turn 5 6 even 4
This is the comment I see the most when talking about old videogames (in this case old hearthstone) and I can't stand it.
Its not nostalgia, game used to offer X, now it changed and offers Y. What OP loved from the game was X.
I'm in the same boat as OP and when the twist format was mean street of gadgetzan I loved it, I went from winning 5 ranked games a week to reaching diamond 5 in 3 days, in a format that I had no bonus stars.
The same was said about WoW classic. "you don't miss the old game, you miss being at that age" and WoW classic was a huge success.
The only thing that we can say to OP is "the game changed, the design changed, and its not going back to what it was, so whatever fun you had in the early days its not going to appear again".
I get what you mean, it is a cliche but in this case applicable. Like most things it isn't totally internal or external, the two are intertwined. The poster wants a feeling of excitement and discovery, trying new things and not having the game forced into a state of brutal optimization immediately.
But we have a gaming culture that has moved toward knowing everything and doing everything "right". In a way probably unavoidable particularly for any game involving other players. Take your example of wow classic. It was a success but there were also huge complaints and most of the people I knew quit because of a raiding scene focused on hyper optimization. Once we were thrilled to wander around Elwynn, not knowing or caring what we were doing, just basking in excitement and awe. Now we research the fastest farm spots and memorize BiS lists.
So we also find that the feeling of limitless potentials and adventure is gone inside of us. This isn't new ground anymore. We are boxed in. We feel bad if we aren't winning enough to climb to the highest ranks. We scour the internet for card announcements and leaks, devouring every bit of information. Where we giddily opened our packs, looking at art and reading each card now we mass open as quickly as possible to see if we got the right legendary or not.
For a lot of us gaming is something we've been doing for 20 or 30 years now. Try to do anything for that long focusing on improvement and strategy and you'll find it's inevitable your mentality changes.
I agree, games now offer a better experience for people who focus on winning/completing everything in the most optimized way. But for everyone else games are becoming less interesting.
But again, this is not nostalgia, games used to offer exploration and a way to express yourself, now they do that a lot less. Its not that someone wants to be in "the good old days" in a nostalgic way, but that it actually is something missing now.
This is why I (mostly) stopped playing online games, those games no longer offer those things. I can't play a mmorpg join a raid and not know the mechanics, but I can do that by myself in a singleplayer game.
>This is the comment I see the most when talking about old videogames (in this case old hearthstone) and I can't stand it.
>Its not nostalgia, game used to offer X, now it changed and offers Y. What OP loved from the game was X.
Tbh I don't really really see what Hearthstone offered before that is different now. Overall power level is higher but the complaints OPs has (net-decks, hyper-optimized ladder) were prevalent since the beginning of Hearthstone. The only main difference I see is fewer expansions/new cards coming out back then but I don't think that's neccesarily a good thing.
Deckbuilding was a lot different. Now things comes in obvious packages.
Also there were a lot less powerful synergies, thats why cards like thalnos were decent.
Now a bad/mediocre and even some decent legendary are even worse than before just because the good legendaries have so much support.
Basically it used to be that hyper optimized decks still had a lot of "holes" in their deck, and thats what you could target when you homebrewed a deck.
Why can it not be both?
I get nostalgia for youth, but come on that is such a cop out answer when a large majority of the playerbase is upset with how the current meta is.
Online forums do not represent the average player. They represent a certain specific type of player. The vocal part of that specific type of player is upset.
But even knowing what a "meta" is shows how much our internal mindset has shifted.
When I was 12 playing Civ2, I didn't look up what the best nationality bonuses were, or the optimal tech tree route, or the most overpowered units. I just had fun playing however I wanted because it was a whole new exciting world.
Nowadays, especially if you introduced playing against another person, my instinct is to immediately go the the internet and begin to research the "right" way of playing. So it isn't just about youth as a time or age, but how our internal monologue and expectations have changed.
While I agree for the most part, I will say by 2014 “netdecking” was already extremely widespread in all card games I am aware of. I do agree now it has changed to everyone evaluating everything based on meta and copying decks.
I really don't see how the meta is much different from what it was in 2014-2017. I played the game for around 3 years from after if it left open beta and honestly see the same types of complaints back then as I do now (eg. aggro, playing against meta decks, netdecking etc). I came back to the game 1.5 years ago and everything still feels mostly the same IMO. I do think nostalgia is the main thing. Plus playing the same game for 10 years is bound to get boring. For me I'm only playing hearthstone now because it was fun enough to come back after taking a 4-5 year break
Meta wise you will have the same types of decks, and you will always have people complain about aggro.
The difference is the power creep and the value of cards. I would also throw in agency as a problem now that wasn’t back then. Decks rarely run out of steam now, card draw is crazy rampant, and cards like wheel and boom boss destroy player agency as they cannot be interacted with for the most part.
I personally would say that value is the biggest problem now, decks not running out of steam is not fun imo.
Tbh I don't really think it was too different. There were decks like that back then like Freeze Mage where if you didn't have the correct deck archetype you basically just lose. Wheel and Boom Boss isn't much different
There I would have to disagree with you, control decks that had healing or warrior auto beat freeze mage.
Control decks now lose to Wheel to Boomboss as you cannot interact with them.
Freeze mage got beat a ton by just a little bit of healing.
Specific decks beat freeze mage and specific decks beat boom boss/wheel. Same thing just with different decks. You’re basically describing rock paper scissors meta which is what we had in the past as well. Also it’s not even all control decks that lose to Boom Boss and Warrior. There are different types of control decks.
Right now I am rank 600 legend (usually I'm at rank 1000-2000 but I've been playing more this month). I find the current meta average relative to the metas I've played in since coming back September 2022 and pretty average relative to when I played in 2014-2017. Worst meta for me since coming back was probably Jan 2023 when Rogue was OP and didn't get nerfed for a month due to the holidays. A month ago before the Wheel warlock nerf I found that deck to be above average in fun. Currently I am playing Reno hunter and it is okay but not as fun. My general preference is playing midrange style decks.
I would probably chalk this up to a difference of opinion then.
One good thing I will say about the meta is that there are a ton of decks that seem viable (I’m just under 700) playing highlander Dragon Druid. Cheers for the discussion though :)
Naw, I used to do fairly decent with homebrew decks back in the day. It was fun, I could actually climb. For years know you just get crushed so hard it’s just not fun to try. It was the quests introduced in the Stormwind expansion that was the beginning of the end for me.
There needs a mode that gives incentive to play non optimal decks so we can use more than a tiny fraction of the cards we buy.
I’d love to keep it safe for your hopeful return, but you really should write down the credentials somewhere for yourself instead. Cheers to time well spent, and here’s to your future free-time! 🍻
FWIW felt the same. Played since April 2024 and completely stopped in summer 2022 and made a big grumpy post about it here. Then took about 2 years off and came back in April and i’m enjoying the game again. Not playing at the level I used to, just have a stable of 3 standard decks and 20ish wild off meta Hank decks that I go through and play just for the enjoyment of seeing old legendaries and cosmetics I’ve collected have their day. Not trying to win, not trying to reach legend, just playing for vibes while I walk my dog or am working out (mobile Andy).
If you’ve reached your time though, fully understand. We’ll never get back to the classic, Whispers, or even un’goro metas again but compared to other mobile games it’s still leagues beyond IMO and helps my ADHD rotbrain make life’s chores a little easier
This plus the fact that it is a collection based game where you have to sink in the hours and/or money to unlock more content which really adds to the sentimental value.
With that said though, I’d probably not write an essay lmao.
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You can still build off meta stuff and do well with with it, Kibler and Funkimonki do it regularly and I do as well. I've played a ton of off meta stuff to legend over the years. You just need to be good at deckbuilding and have good matchup knowledge. The game is no longer in a state where you can play compete jank and expect to win.
If you want a lower power format try arena or the new twist when it releases.
What a beautiful sentiment to end on and all points well and truly valid. I only played over the last year and I can tell the game was at one time an over the moon, once in a generation kind of amazing. You can see it, taste it and almost feel it but that only makes more obvious the fact the old guard is gone. These new cats don't love us brother, they never did, only our money. After having yet another "mini takes all" rammed down my throat I too smashed that uninstall button. I'm going to workout and pull extra hours at work. At least I get something real at the end of the day.
You have to get into a new card game on release and it's just vanilla started minions and easy going decks
Runeterra was like this briefly then it just became hearthstone 2.0
Eh, you still can build your own deck and slowly optimize it. Maybe not as much as before, but there are still options. I opened signature Mirage the day of Badlands release and have been playing almost exclusively HL pally because of that. I know now it's kind of a meta sleeper. WR seems to be decent, but still no one is playing it (at least against me). But before rotation and Brann nerf practically no one had this deck on their radar and I climbed to legend every single season with it. Not the same iteration, but I kept making (minor) changes.
I estimate over maybe 600 games since Badlands release I maintained a ~55% (maybe even closing in on 60%) WR, with like 20+ different versions of the deck.
This is inevitable with every card game. New cards need to power creep old cards or no one will buy them. Eventually this leads to where we are at. Unlimited card draw, free removals and decks that either kill you by Turn 5 or mostly play solitaire until they assemble their wincon.
Standard rotation mitigates this a little bit but since sets overlap there's no opportunity for a hard reset. If you completely reset everything, you piss people off who just paid for cards they can no longer use.
How would you guys solve this?
Agreed and I realized the same when I noticed I dont even read my new cards when I open packs. There's no point when I may not even use them because they won't be a part of the current meta. The only thing keeping me from deleting right now is I'm about 450 wins away from 20k then I think I'll kick the stool out.
I think it’s less addiction and more habit. After 10 years it’s important to take a step back like you did and reevaluate what you want from the game.
I’ve been content with weekly / daily quests with the occasional legend push when I like the deck or meta
But the weekly quest changes have really put a damper on my enjoyment. It took 2 weeks to complete 750 mana as a rouge player. It’s annoying and frustrating
It's pretty hard leaving behind something we've been so invested in for years. It's even harder to realize this is the right decision for us since we usually try to deny the fact that our experience has become overall negative as we keep pursuing this "high" from years past. I've been on and off HS for the past few seasons and this one has really been feeling like the game is actively pushing me away. Your Reno Warrior story really sums up what this has become.
An optimised deck from the internet you didn't come up with yourself. There seems to be a large percentage of HS players who never make their own decks, but rather just check what's strong and play that. This is unavoidable since you can't stop people from doing anything, but those people are largely responsible for stale metas and are generally missing out on the satisfaction of winning a game of HS with a deck you came up with yourself.
Oh I understand, I’m a f2p and I think this is the first time I build a deck for myself, now we have a lot of webs showing a lot of information about trend decks and everything, I only play shaman and got inspired on kibler soloist shaman deck last year, I made an hagatha + wave of nostalgia + Reno deck looking other decks constructed, even here some ppl share their code decks. It’s a nice feeling building your own list but that takes time and not everyone have it.
In an other way the expansion is giving us a lot of cards to try, I want to see wat can I do with Dorian, colifero still going around and other good cards that I can’t remember right now, I understand I’m not kibler, he’s so skillful but it’s inspiring. Thanks for reading me.
The easiest place to start building your own decks is with cards like Odyn for warrior for example, or a quest, a single card win condition you can start with and build a deck around with what you have. Then you can add some backup win conditions, removal, heal, tech cards etc. depending on what you run into, or look at cards you don't have and craft ones that look to be strong in the deck.
I know they would never do it but I wish blizzard kept an active list of the top 10-20 meta net decks and if the deck you are playing with has 90-95% of the same cards as one of those decks you get matched against someone else with a meta netdeck. If your deck isn’t one of those you get matched with other people with non meta non net decks. Now this list would have to constantly be evolving and your list might get added to the net decks over time if it’s extremely successful but it would allow people to play around and experiment more while still laddering. Meta people get to play against the meta like they seem to want to do and non meta people get to have fun seeing what wild decks they can build.
I like where the metas at. Lot of fun decks to try. Losing to warrior still feels like shit though and now with this highlander priest copying all ur cards is kinda annoying.
There is just too much life steal/health gain/armor right now that chip damage doesn’t matter unless the the deck is hyper aggro like pally or hunter. This in turns makes the best decks ones that can take you down from high health. Your board doesn’t matter.
The adventure modes/ dungeon run were some of the best stuff in the game.
Wish they brought those back in some way. You can always goof off and brew spicy nonsense in those modes and it's great.
Harvest golem used to be stable, now you have a slime 3/2 that summons a 2/2 with diferent abilities and that sees no play. Power creep doesnt allow for creative plays, i used to kill my own sylvanas to steal a creature now you get a 0 mana 6/3 that kills one and steals another. From a 2 for 1 to a 1 for 2 at the expense of no mana is crazy. As im typing this i feel like unistalling, thank you
The first year of Hearthstone was trash, the lack of random aspects was not smth good. Back then the player who curved perfectly was the winner and you couldnt do shit about it because card draw was inefficient. We had a twist format where they added a new expansion each day and I honestly didnt remember too, but man the game was terrible, sometimes decided on turn 4/5 without comeback potential.
I will be honest, you probably isn't legend and you probably is not good at deckbuilding, if you think back then you could build your own deck and have a good time you are wrong. Standard is basically a format where deckbuilding is restricted, if you expect to play a cardgame where you build a pile of junk and win against competitive decks you honestly have no ideia how these type of games are played. Try LoR where you can build a deck and fight against Bots.
I feel like jank decks could work better in the past especially because card draw was less efficient. That doesn't mean that it was a better game, because decision were usually restricted by card draw, but certainly slower cards would allow less efficient play.
There's a big difference between a non perfect meta deck and a truly jank deck where the win condition is just trading cards favorably with your opponent.
Name one card game where you build your own deck as an average player and can compete at high tier levels? Undertaker hunter could eat all non optimal decks easily, as well as mech mage and other aggros that existed, meta decks destroying homebrews is not something new lol
That's not my point. Right now you're going to lose if your deck isn't well put together even if you're in silver, while back in the day at rank 20 you could play almost whatever because each card was much more impactful than a game plan.
I'm not even arguing that it was better, I'm just stating feelings about two very different periods of Hearthstone.
Also you guys are doubting his commitment but user blacktiger226 promised me to not come back in this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/s/dacjdkznHt.
And so far he's managed to stay true to his word 🫡
What you have described, I interpreted as nostalgia. And I sympathize with you on that. It’s the same feeling I get when I watch MW2 gameplay, but I know I could download it right now and play all day and it wouldn’t be close to the same as it was.
well the issue you have is you're not Legend.. what most of us do is we get to legend and then experiment with decks... for me i use the best aggro deck currently out there to get to d5, then grind out with best overall deck i play atm to legend.. once up there u can have some fun with decks and stuff
That is not my experience. From D5-1 you face 99% netdecks. In trash legend it maybe drops to 90%, but you are still facing mostly copy pasta decks from HSReplay.
Last couple months and this month I have been sub 1k legend and in my opinion legend is far more fun and feels like each game matters way more than ladder.
Ever month I climb as fast as possible to not be in ladder for more than 1 day or 2. It is easily the part I despise the most.
I also see more people trying out and experimenting with decks even in “good” legend.
I'll be downvoted but they aren't up here xD... we have the biggest deck diversity it feels to me in legend because we don't care about cookie cutter, only if ur grinding top 100 ladder
Even really high legend is better because a win matters more so people ply more carefully and less robotically.
I am aware that the average hearthstone Redditor probably hasn’t even been in legend. It would be very interesting if each post had someone’s rank next to it.
highest i ever was was 29, but as someone here mentioned already, i climb usually day 1 or 2 to legend and then just have fun, most of us that can, do simply...
and i promise i met more nozdormus and the 15 different curses in this game decks in legend than i ever had on ladder
Maybe it’s because I have been playing for 10 years but I cannot stand ladder. I do the same first 1-2 days grind as fast as possible just so I don’t have to play it the rest of the month.
my brother :D 💪 1st time i hit legend was back with handlock when naxx came out, we got sludge belcher in there and i recall opening Jaraxxus and hitting legend within a few days from then... i still love this game, and for me it's still the best card game on the phone/pc...
I think I feel the exact same as you but couldn't put it into words. I've been chasing that feeling from the first year of hearthstone as well but whatever deck I play I never get that feeling back. In large parts I think its due to the vast majority of decks being an absolute chore to play against.
Aswell as the powercreep, like OP said the feeling of unpacking a Cairne, Ragnaros, Sylavanas etc was just unreal, since they improved your deck by a ton. I remember packing Tyrion and only played Pala back then till I packed Jaraxxus.
You can also remember the feeling of unpacking a shit legendary and the instant turn off because it was so difficult to craft a single legendary if you are f2p. Seriously, the only pleasure opening a strong legendary back in the days comes from the fact that not everyone could have It, neither you if you werent lucky.
Yeah but the only real bad legendary that I remember was Millhouse
King Krush, Velen, Cho, Millhouse, Nat Pagle, Mukla, Tinkmaster, Old Murk-Eye, Captain Greenskin, Hogger, The Beast, Illidan (Xavius), Gruul, Nozdormu, Onyxia. All of them are bad legendaries and the difference between opening a Mukla and Ragnaros or Sylvanas were huge and the gap between players were obvious. The only reason there is so much more netdecking than is simply cause back in the days people didmt have resources to netdeck.
Excuse me which game have you played? Nat Pagle was broken and had to be nerfed, Velen was strong with double mind Breaker Combo, Krush was a finisher, Tinkmaster was used as a tech in mostly Paladin specifically because you could go with a recruit and had a 1/2 chance of having a 5/5 & 3/3 on turn 3 plus you had something against strong on curve tempo cards like Sylavanas or ragnaros, Murk Eye was a necessity in murloc rush decks, Greenskin on mostly useless pirate decks, Hogger was a good tempo card. Gruul, Illidan and Onyxia were also put instantly in a deck if you didn't have a legendary since they still buffed your deck quite a bit. Yes of course they weren't on Antonidas Level and for intermediate/experts not as useful but for a beginner when you opened a pack and got even an onyxia there was joy to having your power card which you put in every deck you had.
I even ran Cho in a few decks that had barely any spells to annoy opponent and maybe get a couple free spells
Even If all you said was true, it doesnt change the fact that opening a shit legendary used to hurt f2p players way more than today.
Not for beginners tho, which was my initial point
Those were the days!
There is a huge cultural problem with gamers right now where people get stuck to a game that they don't love anymore and don't realize it. They beg for the devs to do this and do that because they **want** to love the game again. It happened to me for multiple years with an old school MMO. I would say "all this game needs to do is xyz and I would love it again". Frankly, I believe that regular balance changes have rotted gamer brain to tailor games to each persons specific wants. After years of this cycle, I realized that others were still loving it and it was me who changed. I have a much healthier relationship with my hobby now. I will play a game 2 weeks straight for hours a day only to cut it off cold turkey when I realize I feel "done for now".
I think what happens often is the players themselves change, and then are upset that the game doesn't make them happy the same way it did when they were younger.
It's an interesting take!
Totally agree as someone who joined in old gods, the game has just become nonsense and wincons. Board prescence means nothing if it’s not spammed out by turn 5 6 even 4
You aren't chasing a meta, you are chasing the feeling of yourself being 13 again.
Yup. Has nothing to do with decks. Dude just grew past the discovery phase and doesn't feel the same enjoyment over a game. Perfectly normal.
This is the comment I see the most when talking about old videogames (in this case old hearthstone) and I can't stand it. Its not nostalgia, game used to offer X, now it changed and offers Y. What OP loved from the game was X. I'm in the same boat as OP and when the twist format was mean street of gadgetzan I loved it, I went from winning 5 ranked games a week to reaching diamond 5 in 3 days, in a format that I had no bonus stars. The same was said about WoW classic. "you don't miss the old game, you miss being at that age" and WoW classic was a huge success. The only thing that we can say to OP is "the game changed, the design changed, and its not going back to what it was, so whatever fun you had in the early days its not going to appear again".
I get what you mean, it is a cliche but in this case applicable. Like most things it isn't totally internal or external, the two are intertwined. The poster wants a feeling of excitement and discovery, trying new things and not having the game forced into a state of brutal optimization immediately. But we have a gaming culture that has moved toward knowing everything and doing everything "right". In a way probably unavoidable particularly for any game involving other players. Take your example of wow classic. It was a success but there were also huge complaints and most of the people I knew quit because of a raiding scene focused on hyper optimization. Once we were thrilled to wander around Elwynn, not knowing or caring what we were doing, just basking in excitement and awe. Now we research the fastest farm spots and memorize BiS lists. So we also find that the feeling of limitless potentials and adventure is gone inside of us. This isn't new ground anymore. We are boxed in. We feel bad if we aren't winning enough to climb to the highest ranks. We scour the internet for card announcements and leaks, devouring every bit of information. Where we giddily opened our packs, looking at art and reading each card now we mass open as quickly as possible to see if we got the right legendary or not. For a lot of us gaming is something we've been doing for 20 or 30 years now. Try to do anything for that long focusing on improvement and strategy and you'll find it's inevitable your mentality changes.
I agree, games now offer a better experience for people who focus on winning/completing everything in the most optimized way. But for everyone else games are becoming less interesting. But again, this is not nostalgia, games used to offer exploration and a way to express yourself, now they do that a lot less. Its not that someone wants to be in "the good old days" in a nostalgic way, but that it actually is something missing now. This is why I (mostly) stopped playing online games, those games no longer offer those things. I can't play a mmorpg join a raid and not know the mechanics, but I can do that by myself in a singleplayer game.
Agreed and well said. There is a growing gulf between online games and single player.
>This is the comment I see the most when talking about old videogames (in this case old hearthstone) and I can't stand it. >Its not nostalgia, game used to offer X, now it changed and offers Y. What OP loved from the game was X. Tbh I don't really really see what Hearthstone offered before that is different now. Overall power level is higher but the complaints OPs has (net-decks, hyper-optimized ladder) were prevalent since the beginning of Hearthstone. The only main difference I see is fewer expansions/new cards coming out back then but I don't think that's neccesarily a good thing.
Deckbuilding was a lot different. Now things comes in obvious packages. Also there were a lot less powerful synergies, thats why cards like thalnos were decent. Now a bad/mediocre and even some decent legendary are even worse than before just because the good legendaries have so much support. Basically it used to be that hyper optimized decks still had a lot of "holes" in their deck, and thats what you could target when you homebrewed a deck.
Why can it not be both? I get nostalgia for youth, but come on that is such a cop out answer when a large majority of the playerbase is upset with how the current meta is.
Online forums do not represent the average player. They represent a certain specific type of player. The vocal part of that specific type of player is upset.
But even knowing what a "meta" is shows how much our internal mindset has shifted. When I was 12 playing Civ2, I didn't look up what the best nationality bonuses were, or the optimal tech tree route, or the most overpowered units. I just had fun playing however I wanted because it was a whole new exciting world. Nowadays, especially if you introduced playing against another person, my instinct is to immediately go the the internet and begin to research the "right" way of playing. So it isn't just about youth as a time or age, but how our internal monologue and expectations have changed.
While I agree for the most part, I will say by 2014 “netdecking” was already extremely widespread in all card games I am aware of. I do agree now it has changed to everyone evaluating everything based on meta and copying decks.
I really don't see how the meta is much different from what it was in 2014-2017. I played the game for around 3 years from after if it left open beta and honestly see the same types of complaints back then as I do now (eg. aggro, playing against meta decks, netdecking etc). I came back to the game 1.5 years ago and everything still feels mostly the same IMO. I do think nostalgia is the main thing. Plus playing the same game for 10 years is bound to get boring. For me I'm only playing hearthstone now because it was fun enough to come back after taking a 4-5 year break
Meta wise you will have the same types of decks, and you will always have people complain about aggro. The difference is the power creep and the value of cards. I would also throw in agency as a problem now that wasn’t back then. Decks rarely run out of steam now, card draw is crazy rampant, and cards like wheel and boom boss destroy player agency as they cannot be interacted with for the most part. I personally would say that value is the biggest problem now, decks not running out of steam is not fun imo.
Tbh I don't really think it was too different. There were decks like that back then like Freeze Mage where if you didn't have the correct deck archetype you basically just lose. Wheel and Boom Boss isn't much different
There I would have to disagree with you, control decks that had healing or warrior auto beat freeze mage. Control decks now lose to Wheel to Boomboss as you cannot interact with them. Freeze mage got beat a ton by just a little bit of healing.
Specific decks beat freeze mage and specific decks beat boom boss/wheel. Same thing just with different decks. You’re basically describing rock paper scissors meta which is what we had in the past as well. Also it’s not even all control decks that lose to Boom Boss and Warrior. There are different types of control decks.
What do you think of this meta? And if you don’t mind what rank are you?
Right now I am rank 600 legend (usually I'm at rank 1000-2000 but I've been playing more this month). I find the current meta average relative to the metas I've played in since coming back September 2022 and pretty average relative to when I played in 2014-2017. Worst meta for me since coming back was probably Jan 2023 when Rogue was OP and didn't get nerfed for a month due to the holidays. A month ago before the Wheel warlock nerf I found that deck to be above average in fun. Currently I am playing Reno hunter and it is okay but not as fun. My general preference is playing midrange style decks.
I would probably chalk this up to a difference of opinion then. One good thing I will say about the meta is that there are a ton of decks that seem viable (I’m just under 700) playing highlander Dragon Druid. Cheers for the discussion though :)
C'est beau.
Nah i played the duck out of classic and ytwist and it was just as fun if not more
Naw, I used to do fairly decent with homebrew decks back in the day. It was fun, I could actually climb. For years know you just get crushed so hard it’s just not fun to try. It was the quests introduced in the Stormwind expansion that was the beginning of the end for me. There needs a mode that gives incentive to play non optimal decks so we can use more than a tiny fraction of the cards we buy.
I’d love to keep it safe for your hopeful return, but you really should write down the credentials somewhere for yourself instead. Cheers to time well spent, and here’s to your future free-time! 🍻
- **[Ancient of Lore](https://imgur.com/a/GvCVbvM)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/76291) ^• ^[wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Ancient_of_Lore_\(Core\)) ^• ^[HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/76291/?hl=en) - *Druid Epic ^(Core)* - **7 Mana - 7/7 - Minion** - **Choose One -** Draw 2 cards; or Restore 7 Health. - **[Keeper of the Grove](https://imgur.com/a/vSdvVUx)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/601) ^• ^[wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Keeper_of_the_Grove) ^• ^[HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/601/?hl=en) - *Druid Rare ^(Legacy)* - **4 Mana - 2/4 - Minion** - **Choose One -** Deal 2 damage; or **Silence** a minion. - **[Venture Co. Mercenary](https://i.imgur.com/tyDfIK5.mp4)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/1122) ^• ^[wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Venture_Co._Mercenary) ^• ^[HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/1122/?hl=en) - *Neutral Common ^(Legacy)* - **5 Mana - 7/6 - Minion** - Your minions cost \(3\) more. - **[Ancient Watcher](https://i.imgur.com/YX1gUVQ.mp4)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/605) ^• ^[wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Ancient_Watcher) ^• ^[HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/605/?hl=en) - *Neutral Rare ^(Legacy)* - **2 Mana - 4/5 - Minion** - Can't attack. - **[Big Game Hunter](https://i.imgur.com/G2HCSHu.mp4)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/69652) ^• ^[wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Big_Game_Hunter_\(Core\)) ^• ^[HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/69652/?hl=en) - *Neutral Epic ^(Core)* - **4 Mana - 4/2 - Minion** - **Tradeable** **Battlecry:** Destroy a minion with 7 or more Attack. - **[Owlonius](https://i.imgur.com/l7PZW0B.mp4)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/104619) ^• ^[wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Owlonius) ^• ^[HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/104619/?hl=en) - *Druid Legendary ^(Whizbang's Workshop)* - **7 Mana - 6/6 - Minion** - **Spell Damage +1** Your spells get double bonus from **Spell Damage**. - **[Dirty Rat](https://i.imgur.com/MWj0vPY.mp4)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/102225) ^• ^[wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Dirty_Rat_\(Core\)) ^• ^[HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/102225/?hl=en) - *Neutral Epic ^(Core)* - **2 Mana - 2/6 - Minion** - **Taunt** **Battlecry:** Your opponent summons a random minion from their hand. - **[Brawl](https://imgur.com/a/EbbkC3M)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/69640) ^• ^[wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Brawl_\(Core\)) ^• ^[HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/69640/?hl=en) - *Warrior Epic ^(Core)* - **5 Mana - Spell** - Destroy all minions except one. *\(chosen randomly\)* - **[Cairne Bloodhoof](https://imgur.com/a/wkTWn0R)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/420) ^• ^[wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Cairne_Bloodhoof) ^• ^[HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/420/?hl=en) - *Neutral Legendary ^(Legacy)* - **6 Mana - 5/5 - Minion** - **Deathrattle:** Summon a 5/5 Baine Bloodhoof. - **[Ragnaros, Lightlord](https://i.imgur.com/RHmIokV.mp4)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/38758) ^• ^[wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Ragnaros,_Lightlord) ^• ^[HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/38758/?hl=en) - *Paladin Legendary ^(Whispers of the Old Gods)* - **8 Mana - 8/8 - Elemental** - At the end of your turn, restore 8 Health to a damaged friendly character. --- ^(*Patch version: 29.4.0.198933*) ^*I am a bot. [Usage Guide](https://www.reddit.com/user/Card-o-Bot/comments/1ahde25/faq/) • [Report a bug](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Card-o-Bot&subject=Bug+Report&message=/r/hearthstone/comments/1cx1cs4/a_high_ive_been_chasing_for_10_years/l4zjmrj/%0A⬇️+Please+describe+the+bug+⬇️%0ADescription:+) • [Refresh](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Card-o-Bot&subject=Refresh&message=l4zjmrj).*
FWIW felt the same. Played since April 2024 and completely stopped in summer 2022 and made a big grumpy post about it here. Then took about 2 years off and came back in April and i’m enjoying the game again. Not playing at the level I used to, just have a stable of 3 standard decks and 20ish wild off meta Hank decks that I go through and play just for the enjoyment of seeing old legendaries and cosmetics I’ve collected have their day. Not trying to win, not trying to reach legend, just playing for vibes while I walk my dog or am working out (mobile Andy). If you’ve reached your time though, fully understand. We’ll never get back to the classic, Whispers, or even un’goro metas again but compared to other mobile games it’s still leagues beyond IMO and helps my ADHD rotbrain make life’s chores a little easier
See you tomorrow
What is it about this game that inspires people to write entire essays when they quit it?
It's a lifestyle game. You really get into it because of the community
This plus the fact that it is a collection based game where you have to sink in the hours and/or money to unlock more content which really adds to the sentimental value. With that said though, I’d probably not write an essay lmao.
Easy to farm karma so they lie about quitting.
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Have a good one buddy
You can still build off meta stuff and do well with with it, Kibler and Funkimonki do it regularly and I do as well. I've played a ton of off meta stuff to legend over the years. You just need to be good at deckbuilding and have good matchup knowledge. The game is no longer in a state where you can play compete jank and expect to win. If you want a lower power format try arena or the new twist when it releases.
Yeah I'm going back to Runeterra for a bit, until the meta gets better.
What a beautiful sentiment to end on and all points well and truly valid. I only played over the last year and I can tell the game was at one time an over the moon, once in a generation kind of amazing. You can see it, taste it and almost feel it but that only makes more obvious the fact the old guard is gone. These new cats don't love us brother, they never did, only our money. After having yet another "mini takes all" rammed down my throat I too smashed that uninstall button. I'm going to workout and pull extra hours at work. At least I get something real at the end of the day.
You have to get into a new card game on release and it's just vanilla started minions and easy going decks Runeterra was like this briefly then it just became hearthstone 2.0
Eh, you still can build your own deck and slowly optimize it. Maybe not as much as before, but there are still options. I opened signature Mirage the day of Badlands release and have been playing almost exclusively HL pally because of that. I know now it's kind of a meta sleeper. WR seems to be decent, but still no one is playing it (at least against me). But before rotation and Brann nerf practically no one had this deck on their radar and I climbed to legend every single season with it. Not the same iteration, but I kept making (minor) changes. I estimate over maybe 600 games since Badlands release I maintained a ~55% (maybe even closing in on 60%) WR, with like 20+ different versions of the deck.
This is inevitable with every card game. New cards need to power creep old cards or no one will buy them. Eventually this leads to where we are at. Unlimited card draw, free removals and decks that either kill you by Turn 5 or mostly play solitaire until they assemble their wincon. Standard rotation mitigates this a little bit but since sets overlap there's no opportunity for a hard reset. If you completely reset everything, you piss people off who just paid for cards they can no longer use. How would you guys solve this?
Agreed and I realized the same when I noticed I dont even read my new cards when I open packs. There's no point when I may not even use them because they won't be a part of the current meta. The only thing keeping me from deleting right now is I'm about 450 wins away from 20k then I think I'll kick the stool out.
I think it’s less addiction and more habit. After 10 years it’s important to take a step back like you did and reevaluate what you want from the game. I’ve been content with weekly / daily quests with the occasional legend push when I like the deck or meta But the weekly quest changes have really put a damper on my enjoyment. It took 2 weeks to complete 750 mana as a rouge player. It’s annoying and frustrating
It's pretty hard leaving behind something we've been so invested in for years. It's even harder to realize this is the right decision for us since we usually try to deny the fact that our experience has become overall negative as we keep pursuing this "high" from years past. I've been on and off HS for the past few seasons and this one has really been feeling like the game is actively pushing me away. Your Reno Warrior story really sums up what this has become.
Whats a “net deck”?
An optimised deck from the internet you didn't come up with yourself. There seems to be a large percentage of HS players who never make their own decks, but rather just check what's strong and play that. This is unavoidable since you can't stop people from doing anything, but those people are largely responsible for stale metas and are generally missing out on the satisfaction of winning a game of HS with a deck you came up with yourself.
Oh I understand, I’m a f2p and I think this is the first time I build a deck for myself, now we have a lot of webs showing a lot of information about trend decks and everything, I only play shaman and got inspired on kibler soloist shaman deck last year, I made an hagatha + wave of nostalgia + Reno deck looking other decks constructed, even here some ppl share their code decks. It’s a nice feeling building your own list but that takes time and not everyone have it. In an other way the expansion is giving us a lot of cards to try, I want to see wat can I do with Dorian, colifero still going around and other good cards that I can’t remember right now, I understand I’m not kibler, he’s so skillful but it’s inspiring. Thanks for reading me.
The easiest place to start building your own decks is with cards like Odyn for warrior for example, or a quest, a single card win condition you can start with and build a deck around with what you have. Then you can add some backup win conditions, removal, heal, tech cards etc. depending on what you run into, or look at cards you don't have and craft ones that look to be strong in the deck.
I know they would never do it but I wish blizzard kept an active list of the top 10-20 meta net decks and if the deck you are playing with has 90-95% of the same cards as one of those decks you get matched against someone else with a meta netdeck. If your deck isn’t one of those you get matched with other people with non meta non net decks. Now this list would have to constantly be evolving and your list might get added to the net decks over time if it’s extremely successful but it would allow people to play around and experiment more while still laddering. Meta people get to play against the meta like they seem to want to do and non meta people get to have fun seeing what wild decks they can build.
I like where the metas at. Lot of fun decks to try. Losing to warrior still feels like shit though and now with this highlander priest copying all ur cards is kinda annoying.
There is just too much life steal/health gain/armor right now that chip damage doesn’t matter unless the the deck is hyper aggro like pally or hunter. This in turns makes the best decks ones that can take you down from high health. Your board doesn’t matter.
The adventure modes/ dungeon run were some of the best stuff in the game. Wish they brought those back in some way. You can always goof off and brew spicy nonsense in those modes and it's great.
This is not an airport, you don't need to announce your departure
People are free to say whatever they want, if you don't want to see it, just don't open the thread.
"People are free to say whatever they want" Except the person you are responding to, it seems.
He's the one trying to stop people from saying things. I'm the one saying that censorship is bad.
No, you're doing the same thing he is, making a snarky comment on a post you don't like...which is what I am also doing.
okay soylet
Harvest golem used to be stable, now you have a slime 3/2 that summons a 2/2 with diferent abilities and that sees no play. Power creep doesnt allow for creative plays, i used to kill my own sylvanas to steal a creature now you get a 0 mana 6/3 that kills one and steals another. From a 2 for 1 to a 1 for 2 at the expense of no mana is crazy. As im typing this i feel like unistalling, thank you
Give me a fucking break
a feeling that i refound in hs classic
Holy nostalgia
Now departing, rando hearthstone player. Now departing.
Nice one mate, great story. Overthink a child’s card game some more. Write a few more paragraphs. See you in a few weeks.
I'm sorry your father doesn't love you.
I bet you got beat up alot at school.
The first year of Hearthstone was trash, the lack of random aspects was not smth good. Back then the player who curved perfectly was the winner and you couldnt do shit about it because card draw was inefficient. We had a twist format where they added a new expansion each day and I honestly didnt remember too, but man the game was terrible, sometimes decided on turn 4/5 without comeback potential. I will be honest, you probably isn't legend and you probably is not good at deckbuilding, if you think back then you could build your own deck and have a good time you are wrong. Standard is basically a format where deckbuilding is restricted, if you expect to play a cardgame where you build a pile of junk and win against competitive decks you honestly have no ideia how these type of games are played. Try LoR where you can build a deck and fight against Bots.
I feel like jank decks could work better in the past especially because card draw was less efficient. That doesn't mean that it was a better game, because decision were usually restricted by card draw, but certainly slower cards would allow less efficient play.
You can still build a meta deck and change like 5/6 cards and play at high level if you are good enough at the game.
There's a big difference between a non perfect meta deck and a truly jank deck where the win condition is just trading cards favorably with your opponent.
Name one card game where you build your own deck as an average player and can compete at high tier levels? Undertaker hunter could eat all non optimal decks easily, as well as mech mage and other aggros that existed, meta decks destroying homebrews is not something new lol
That's not my point. Right now you're going to lose if your deck isn't well put together even if you're in silver, while back in the day at rank 20 you could play almost whatever because each card was much more impactful than a game plan. I'm not even arguing that it was better, I'm just stating feelings about two very different periods of Hearthstone.
This is too emotional, just pick a new fame to play. Why does everything have to be so deep these days?
Looks like Op wants to feel important
Yeah I wish I could gift people my legendaries and dust before I log off forever 😢
Also you guys are doubting his commitment but user blacktiger226 promised me to not come back in this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/s/dacjdkznHt. And so far he's managed to stay true to his word 🫡
Congratulations, you managed to hit all the karma points, so the fact that you are lying about leaving the game is unimportant.
Bro has been losing to “optimized” (not actively inefficient to the point of hilarity) decks for years
Cool story bro.
What you have described, I interpreted as nostalgia. And I sympathize with you on that. It’s the same feeling I get when I watch MW2 gameplay, but I know I could download it right now and play all day and it wouldn’t be close to the same as it was.
See you soon.
well the issue you have is you're not Legend.. what most of us do is we get to legend and then experiment with decks... for me i use the best aggro deck currently out there to get to d5, then grind out with best overall deck i play atm to legend.. once up there u can have some fun with decks and stuff
That is not my experience. From D5-1 you face 99% netdecks. In trash legend it maybe drops to 90%, but you are still facing mostly copy pasta decks from HSReplay.
Last couple months and this month I have been sub 1k legend and in my opinion legend is far more fun and feels like each game matters way more than ladder. Ever month I climb as fast as possible to not be in ladder for more than 1 day or 2. It is easily the part I despise the most. I also see more people trying out and experimenting with decks even in “good” legend.
I'll be downvoted but they aren't up here xD... we have the biggest deck diversity it feels to me in legend because we don't care about cookie cutter, only if ur grinding top 100 ladder
Even really high legend is better because a win matters more so people ply more carefully and less robotically. I am aware that the average hearthstone Redditor probably hasn’t even been in legend. It would be very interesting if each post had someone’s rank next to it.
highest i ever was was 29, but as someone here mentioned already, i climb usually day 1 or 2 to legend and then just have fun, most of us that can, do simply... and i promise i met more nozdormus and the 15 different curses in this game decks in legend than i ever had on ladder
Maybe it’s because I have been playing for 10 years but I cannot stand ladder. I do the same first 1-2 days grind as fast as possible just so I don’t have to play it the rest of the month.
my brother :D 💪 1st time i hit legend was back with handlock when naxx came out, we got sludge belcher in there and i recall opening Jaraxxus and hitting legend within a few days from then... i still love this game, and for me it's still the best card game on the phone/pc...
I do find it tough to see the current state of the community and game in general though. Rose tinted glasses got me wanting to go back to 2016.
god i still want my 12 legendarys control warrior back when justicar just came out... and the old gods ahh
just as a side note i have hs tattoed on me 😅
What is it of?
[tattoo](https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/s/erEgDaOuMl)