With respect to the interaction of the economy and the reward system, I think you have it backwards. The rewards aren’t there as a currency, they’re there because players prefer that they be there. People want rewards and a feeling of progression. The reward system had to be there, and the fact that it’s related to something in the store is merely a contingent fact about the design of the reward system.
When you’re getting the new player experience (<20 hours played, maybe?), maybe you could get the impression that there’s a Hearthstone business model—not pay-to-win as in Magic, but pay-to-have-fun as you can construct a few winning decks for free, but feel limited in options and the option of paying money for cards is available to you. But at some point around that 20 hour mark, arriving quicker if you did spend the money, you realize that actually, the system has given you enough to do just about whatever you want. That that sensation of spending a limited resource on new decks was an illusion long before you noticed.
Then it becomes obvious that the business model is to sell cosmetics, not cards (I’ll happily bet about revenue from cards vs. cosmetics if you think it’s the other way).
Anyhow, my review: The game is what you’d get if a very competent committee actually learned the lessons from Hearthstone and MtG when designing their mass-appeal digital card game. It balances defender’s/attacker’s advantage well by finding an intermediate point between MtG and Hearthstone, to take the most obvious example. The action and stack systems make it obvious that this was intended to play on mobile right from the start, while also retaining much of the interesting player interactivity from more complicated games, and it’s all done very competently. Oh, and the balancing is what people wanted from digital card games all along.
But is it fun? Well, depends on what you like. I think it’s extremely similar to MtG in terms of decision-making complexity across similar types of decks, but LoR is more populated (both in percent of the meta and in number of decks in the meta) by simpler decks. So my expectation for Zvi is that if he manages to learn the cards (and the UI for learning the cards) before throwing any electronics across the room, he’ll very shortly have the resources to craft some Karma combo deck, or some janky cask deck, or a Heimer midrange variant, or some other deck that tickles his fancy, and then he’ll have a lot more fun actually playing the games.
Per my point about resource abundance above, those resources will be there before it’s obvious to your feelings. Don’t hoard if it means you’re having less fun.
Recommendations for the starting card pool: There are plenty of strong and cheap decks, and TBH, spiders is kind of bad right now because it gets a lot of incidental hate. And yet, the tools for the “Ctrl+F Spiders” deck get used elsewhere, maybe illustrating that deckbuilding isn’t quite as simple as Zvi makes it out to be. Burn aggro, elusives/Zed aggro, and base shadow isles control are all cheap, strong decks for a beginner. No budget deck is particularly complicated (burn aggro may actually have the highest skill ceiling of those I listed, being pretty hard to play optimally), so if you want to play the interesting stuff ASAP, I’d priorize crafting Karma, Heimer, or Twisted Fate, all of which can fit into complicated decks either by themselves or with other champs.
I can definitely see the case that one can do ‘whatever one wants relatively quickly’ - once. As in, I can make *one* of those decks, but not all of them, so I need to choose wisely, cause it’ll be a while before I can do the second one, etc.
What’s your pick for the most interesting strategy that’s at least tier-2-ish?
I have a soft spot for Heimerdinger midrange. Usually played as Heimer/Vi with Ionia as the second color these days, because of the decent matchup against both burn and shadow isles control.
Example List: CECACAQEBAAQEAQJAMAQEAQMHECACBA3E42DQAYBAECBAAQBAISTCAYCAIAQGCQBAEAQEJQ
(Import by copying to clipboard, then going to your Collection->Decks page and finding the “Import Deck” button.)
With respect to the interaction of the economy and the reward system, I think you have it backwards. The rewards aren’t there as a currency, they’re there because players prefer that they be there. People want rewards and a feeling of progression. The reward system had to be there, and the fact that it’s related to something in the store is merely a contingent fact about the design of the reward system.
When you’re getting the new player experience (<20 hours played, maybe?), maybe you could get the impression that there’s a Hearthstone business model—not pay-to-win as in Magic, but pay-to-have-fun as you can construct a few winning decks for free, but feel limited in options and the option of paying money for cards is available to you. But at some point around that 20 hour mark, arriving quicker if you did spend the money, you realize that actually, the system has given you enough to do just about whatever you want. That that sensation of spending a limited resource on new decks was an illusion long before you noticed.
Then it becomes obvious that the business model is to sell cosmetics, not cards (I’ll happily bet about revenue from cards vs. cosmetics if you think it’s the other way).
Anyhow, my review: The game is what you’d get if a very competent committee actually learned the lessons from Hearthstone and MtG when designing their mass-appeal digital card game. It balances defender’s/attacker’s advantage well by finding an intermediate point between MtG and Hearthstone, to take the most obvious example. The action and stack systems make it obvious that this was intended to play on mobile right from the start, while also retaining much of the interesting player interactivity from more complicated games, and it’s all done very competently. Oh, and the balancing is what people wanted from digital card games all along.
But is it fun? Well, depends on what you like. I think it’s extremely similar to MtG in terms of decision-making complexity across similar types of decks, but LoR is more populated (both in percent of the meta and in number of decks in the meta) by simpler decks. So my expectation for Zvi is that if he manages to learn the cards (and the UI for learning the cards) before throwing any electronics across the room, he’ll very shortly have the resources to craft some Karma combo deck, or some janky cask deck, or a Heimer midrange variant, or some other deck that tickles his fancy, and then he’ll have a lot more fun actually playing the games.
Per my point about resource abundance above, those resources will be there before it’s obvious to your feelings. Don’t hoard if it means you’re having less fun.
Recommendations for the starting card pool: There are plenty of strong and cheap decks, and TBH, spiders is kind of bad right now because it gets a lot of incidental hate. And yet, the tools for the “Ctrl+F Spiders” deck get used elsewhere, maybe illustrating that deckbuilding isn’t quite as simple as Zvi makes it out to be. Burn aggro, elusives/Zed aggro, and base shadow isles control are all cheap, strong decks for a beginner. No budget deck is particularly complicated (burn aggro may actually have the highest skill ceiling of those I listed, being pretty hard to play optimally), so if you want to play the interesting stuff ASAP, I’d priorize crafting Karma, Heimer, or Twisted Fate, all of which can fit into complicated decks either by themselves or with other champs.
Good feedback and information. Thanks!
I can definitely see the case that one can do ‘whatever one wants relatively quickly’ - once. As in, I can make *one* of those decks, but not all of them, so I need to choose wisely, cause it’ll be a while before I can do the second one, etc.
What’s your pick for the most interesting strategy that’s at least tier-2-ish?
I have a soft spot for Heimerdinger midrange. Usually played as Heimer/Vi with Ionia as the second color these days, because of the decent matchup against both burn and shadow isles control.
Example List: CECACAQEBAAQEAQJAMAQEAQMHECACBA3E42DQAYBAECBAAQBAISTCAYCAIAQGCQBAEAQEJQ
(Import by copying to clipboard, then going to your Collection->Decks page and finding the “Import Deck” button.)