MArcomage

Recommend me some card games i want games i want to play card games that let you choose your cards in your deck if you get all cards at the start of the game thats even better it would be nice to find a game as good as arcomage just with more than 60 players

*sigh* We do, too. Had there been any, we would play them; - ;

But MArcomage is a one-of-a-kind affair^^'

Hearthstone, while vastly different from Arcomage, is a very fun, well-supported, and free-to-play game. You have to work your way up to getting better cards, but it's very accessible.

DPsycho wrote:
Hearthstone, while vastly different from Arcomage, is a very fun, well-supported, and free-to-play game. You have to work your way up to getting better cards, but it's very accessible.

I resent the notion. Heartstone is designed for you to buy as much cards as possible - as all f2p titles with micro transactions are - which doesn't have to be bad, but the booster packs have exorbitant prices to boot. You could buy a pack of actual cards, shipping and tax, for the price five cards a pop cost there.

And, slow and steady, a number of cards in later releases have become just a notch better than the basic pack. Yetis aren't the gold standard anymore, and the current meta demands the better cards aforementioned for each of their concepts. You will be beaten on for a good while before you received any - you can play multiple hours each day for the better part of a month and still be nowhere. People did the math, and I felt the same on my own skin. And then you are forced to play a deck you never planned to play to improve your win rate, and thus your gold gain, to play the decks you wished to play in the first place, a long long time after, disenchant considered. I never wished to play a Warrior, let alone a Warrior with the now-nerfed Warsong Commander, but WC was the first lynchpin card the game gave me and I had to roll with the dice to progress. The same scheme can be seen in many Blizzard games: They bait you with the promise of a good endgame to toil away and become addicted and/or shell out money in the process. Then, the process starts again with an update, making you unable to enjoy the fruits of your work and satisfy yourself - and, therefore, not play the game anymore after a while.

I have left behind Hearthstone for good, and can't recommend the game to anyone. Don't walk out of your own volition into a Skinner Box.

I would counter that you're looking at the game the wrong way. There are several viable strategies for each class, and most of them require having a particular card or two. But if you look at the card pool, form a plan for a deck, and then try to acquire those cards, you're setting yourself up for frustration.

The game is best played by earning the cards from packs and putting together a deck from what you're given. Yes, this can cause you to play using different strategies that what you would have chosen, but it also keeps everyone from playing the exact same deck, a problem that can easily arise in simpler games of its like.

But the most fun is had in the arena, where both players are using decks built haphazardly from the entire card pool (with class restrictions). This helps you learn what's out there and how to use it. The recent addition of the weekly tavern brawl is also an easy way to earn free packs, often using freely provided decks.

Hearthstone is totally f2p. You could call it p2w, but paying anything is unnecessary. The only thing that pumping actual money into it gets you is new expansion cards immediately rather than earning them over the following couple of weeks. I've never spent any real-world money on it and I'm sitting on 6000 gold. I've yet to craft a card with surplus dust only because I've earned just about all I need through free card packs.

TL;DR: Don't "build" Hearthstone decks with cards you don't already have.

Wel, its quite possible to build Heartstone decks with cards you don't have. Its particular hard, but possible. I done this with my MurLock-Deck and it crushes opponents quite frequently. I have to admit that there is a bunch of grinding involved, mostly if you need some legendaries or some cards from the expansion wings, but else its quite doable.You just need to play around 5 games a day to do the quest and this isn't a high amount.

Another game i can recommend is elements the game.

http://www.elementsthegame.com/

It a great card game which bases around 12 elements as recource. It completely free to play and the cards have many possible combinations around each other so the limits for deck building are almost limitless. It can be quite grindy at times to upgrade a complete deck, but since the Arena was introduced (An asyncronous PVP-Area) farming has become quite easy if you know how.

DPsycho wrote:
*snip*

TL;DR: Don't "build" Hearthstone decks with cards you don't already have.

Well when you went into Hearthstone with zero expectations towards what to play anything will be better than nothing, and I'm happy you find fulfillment, but to build specific decks is what I look for in a card game in the first place.

Decks I was forced into by circumstance feel soulless. Let alone with the Warsong Commander deck: I didn't have fun. I know the opponent didn't have fun. Warsong Commander was cheap is a pair of discount marketplace socks. I felt ashamed each and every time I've won.

But I did build a deck with bare more than the basic pack, a spellpower rogue. I played the rogue ad infinitum until I sat back, satisfied and would have been done with the deck forever... and then I had to play it again. I didn't wish to. But it was my only rogue deck to win any games in iron league. In the enjoyment department, I just kicked and saddled up a dead horse. I was already done with the deck. I was satisfied. I wished to leave it behind. And Hearthstone didn't let me.

All of the above is personal experience, of course. As we have to share. But as for "setting myself up for frustration"?

Beside the fact the game is for a fact overpriced every step of the way. Hearthstone is a card game. A good number of the art they have used were made pre-Hearthstone, too. They could have multiple times their investment turn in on launch day with a fair price, but they didn't have fair prices then, and they don't have any now.

Don't buy anything then, you say. Which is fair, I didn't myself. But the fact micro-transaction games assault the senses of the majority of the audience with a temptation to spend (Again, they are how they make a profit, which would be fine, had their prices not have been in the sky too). Every frustration I talked of above? Precalculated. They know there is a good number of players who expect to play a kind of deck. I didn't "set myself up". The devs counted on it. Don't pretend they didn't. That's not on Hearthstone, every microtransaction game does that.

And fact is I would have shelled out the money. I would have, without any regret, bought the cards I wished to play... but you can't buy specific cards, and even had you been able to, to price you pay for 5 DIGITAL pieces of paper could buy my supper! And don't even start on how much cards would cost to buy when you build a deck from dust!

Just since you happen to have or have developed a mindset immune or at least very resistant to such doesn't make them any less loud as they shout in the marketplace to buy their wares and give everyone a heart attack when they look at the price tag. I'm not supposed to have a resistance. I'm not supposed to be able to withstand all of these, and have no expectations to what I play to boot. I shouldn't have to develop a preliminary skill.
I shouldn't even have to rearrange my priorities for a game I play to enjoy myself, for goodness' sake. I shouldn't have to change as a person, JUST to be able to play a game they sell (parts of) for money and have a good time. Ask me to develop life skills, learn life lessons, change for the better, even just learn how to play a game, any day of the week. Learn how NOT to be outraged by a scam? Nobody should.

They are the ones who shouldn't be snide, borderline criminal collectible salesmen.

They have made a product. The responsibility is on their souls. Don't just recommend the game to the masses. You do them a disservice. Recommend to people who are made out of the stuff you are. MeCho isn't.

I get the point, but it depends how far you want to go. If you want to have around rank 10-1 or even better, than you are completely right. If you have a good time just to try new things out, even if you then stumble around rank 18, then your argument hasn't that implication of truth anymore.

It depents on which scale of competition you want to play. The class system is heartstone's biggest weakness and strenght, just stiffing the decks into a degree where each class has only around 2-3 decks avaible which are competative. On the other side it makes it easier for beginners to choose which cards to play. It's a casual approach and one to force player to spend money to get the chase-cards (I see the same in Standart in MTG, where every deck needs most time to consist of rares, because the uncommons and commons became so crappy in the newer sets, while the rares just become stronger... hello Siege Rhino...) .

So, you are right when you want to climb the ladder into oblivion, but if you don't need to and have the resolve to loose ome games to this grinders, you can have a quite good time with heartstone.

Lord_Earthfire wrote:
I get the point, but it depends how far you want to go. If you want to have around rank 10-1 or even better, than you are completely right. If you have a good time just to try new things out, even if you then stumble around rank 18, then your argument hasn't that implication of truth anymore.

...

So, you are right when you want to climb the ladder into oblivion, but if you don't need to and have the resolve to loose ome games to this grinders, you can have a quite good time with heartstone.

You don't get the point then. I don't care for ladder. Does anybody who didn't climb to legend do? I had no ideao.o I just wish to play stupid decks! I couldn't care less how much I win with them once gold is not a factor. I just wished to gang up recombobulate battlecried minions or play a ramp mill druid or something. They would have been so stupid! And fun! I didn't set my bar high. I didn't set myself any bar.

And no, how they try to rip exorbitant amounts of money out of your pocket doesn't depend on anything. That's a steal all the way up and down.

Ah ok, i thought you were talking about pure netdecking to get up the ladder.

Well ok, you got a point there. But that's the point with every online-tcg. Magic Online, Hex and Heartstone are in this point alike, although MTGO is completely only with buying boosters and in HEX its so hard that i don't even see why i should invest time there. Heartstone is there the only game of these where buying cards for real money feels like an option and not like the only possibility. the prices are exactly like in other TCG's. And here lies the problem. In difference to normal TCG the digital TCG's don't give you something like real card games do. You normaly got the cards in your hand. This is missing in these games. Nor can you sell the cards for real money, neither can you use them in other selfmade formats (Like Cube in MTG). It's in my eyes a waste of money either, you're completely right about it.

The problem: There aren't much Cardgames left which offers the opportunity of completely free Deckbuilding like MArcomage does. I see why this can be frustrating. (I, for myself, would never touch MTGO, thats a waste of money, go and get the real cards, folks.)

Well, under this circumstances, the game would be not recommendable. But this is a decision that everyone has to decide for himself. I for myself only play it if i got really nothing to do, and then mindless grinding is an opportunity.

I'm glad you understand:3

At the same time, since you do have to decide for yourself, you have to inform people.

When you recommend Hearthstone, tell them the game is a scam. Tell them to play at their own risk. When your caution discourages them, they wouldn't have enjoyed to play in the first place. Thus, just take your time to in the future:3

To be honest, it's something i assume everyone knows about free to play games. I haven't seen almost only a single online game where buying ingame content for real money doesn't feel like scam. I can only remind myself of Guild wars 1 and 2, where you buy a full version instead of paying money every month, which is reasonable. It's more a thing about online games in general. It's something that splits the community of players and most time players do know when they enter a free to play game that the game wants you at best to buy ingame content.

Some player see the micro transaction as a fair way like they would buy a normal game, others see it as pure scam. I didn't recommended MTGO and HEX because there you cannot really decide if you want to spend money or not. In Heartstone, like any other f2p game, you have the glimpse of choice at least. But you're right that this game forces it more than many other games.

By the way, i didn't played Magic origins, which was released as free to play game. I cannot tell anything about it, has someone some ipression of that game?

Lord_Earthfire wrote:
To be honest, it's something i assume everyone knows about free to play games.

F2P doesn't equal overpriced boosters.

Blacklight:Ret gives you a fair price for what you pay. Team Fortress 2 gives you a fair price for what you pay, and lets you trade. Magic The Gathering Online has a based trade system, too, by the card.


Hearthstone is an overpriced, glorified scam. You can't trade the cards you've bought, you buy them blind, and disenchant gives a downright offensive return. A potentially fun game, and still a scam.

Magic The Gathering Online has a based trade system, too, by the card.

Well, yes, but the opportunity cost of buying the cards is far too high to justify buying cards. I mean buying a Legancy dack cost almost 60% of the original price of the cards. And thats still 1500€. For virtual cards, no actually real cards. With Event entry fees and returns which almost always feels like a loss since the play points are introduced, which cannot even be traded now. This is just pure scam. You can still trade the cards, and build with this more decks, but the opportunity cost is just unjustifyable (Even Standart Decks cost around 75€, which almost matches real cardboard).

What i wanted to say with this is that everyone who played online games has a feeling what prices are justifyable for them and which not. You're right that Heartstone has no trading system, which makes you really dependable on buying new cards and forces you to buy a lot of boosters (And we pointed already out that buying boosters for real money is scam).

And you're right that someone has to inform the others if the person feels that it is scam

Lord_Earthfire wrote:

Magic The Gathering Online has a based trade system, too, by the card.

Well, yes, but the opportunity cost of buying the cards is far too high to justify buying cards. *snip*scam*snip

Yes they do, and no it's not.

A scam is when you are fooled or strongarmed into a bad deal. In MTGO, you pay for the cards you ASKED for. There is certainty, and a clear extablishment of what you can buy for your money. You can walk away from the table any time you wish, and resell your investment back into the market.

The cards cost too much? They do, but that just means they are misers. Still wrong, but they are up front. They know they offer a ripoff and they don't hide their greed one bit, and most important of all they don't outright try to steal your money. They show you a product, specify a price, and when you don't like what you hear, you can just walk away. I can respect them for the honesty.

Compare the same to Hearthstone where you pay the same amount of money for cards you never asked for. One card I'd buy for MTGO costs 15 Hearthstone cards I never needed. Chances are, MTGO purchases will have a much better payoff. And you don't OWN your card in Hearthstone. Hearthstone graciously allows you the chance to play with THEIR cards. You can't sell your deck through legal channels, BECAUSE IT'S A SCAM. They know a trade system would break their money circle jerk. Had they implemented a card trade system, of any sort, they would do a legitimate business, and goodness forbid they will do anything near decent.

The presence of a trade system saves MTGO from scam classification. The lack of one damns Hearthstone.

Well ok, i admit that the opportunity cost in MTGO is open for everyone to see and thus cannot be directly considered being scam.

But not the system of Event points and Tickets. You buy the tickets, go into events with them, which have a fixed cost, and go out with boosters and event points. You cannot trade the event points (so here we got a direct loss), and you can call yourself lucky if you can sell the boosters for a reasonable price, because they are not in for fixed prices and depent on the market (The Event points were only introduced to deinflationate the booster prices, but i doubt it will work). So when you play the game in payed events, you are loosing money, even if you win. Thats something not many take in mind and its not told anywhere on the system, and thats something i would call scam.

you're right about Heartstone. Thats the only reason why its so easy to win gold and boosters. Because they cannot, unlike in Hex, be converted into real value.

Edit: Well, the way to look at the events in MTGO, its more likely to be called gambling, because even if you win, you loose most of the time....

Lord_Earthfire wrote:


you're right about Heartstone. Thats the only reason why its so easy to win gold and boosters. Because they cannot, unlike in Hex, be converted into real value.

There is nothing easy in gold accumulation when you don't take your current deck in stride.

For each 3 games you win, you gain 10 gold(Don't even mention Quests. Quests just make it worse). A small fraction of a deck's or arena pass' price. Chances are, without a net deck, around half of your games will be losses, thus, six games are played on average for 10 gold.


So you've just played for two or more hours with a deck you didn't like.

Does that sound easy to you?

No, in fact i join only 30 min every 3 days and make the quests. Thats easy 150 gold. Keep in mind that you can rotate a quest every day. So i need around 10 games for all quests and when i dont like to make a quest (Like with a priest), i just roll it again and join the other day.

For my decks, i have a MurLock-Deck (my only semi-competative one), a Shaman control and a druid token/combo-deck.

Quests in Hearthstone are another, designed, premeditated, special kind of evil.

Say you have a functional deck built. Or a deck you enjoy to play. One deck, works with one class, as most of them do.

Hearthstone gives you a quest of another class. You roll again for quests. They give you a different class again.
You buy packs, wait for quests to switch, or just play, a class you never had any wish to play. Or even worse, you buy packs through gold or otherwise, for the ability to complete quests.

The losses you suffer due to a class you can't play well in a deck you couldn't construct well are just the tip of the iceberg.
They are just another layer of the micro transaction scheme, which, combined with the near extortion of card prices is just gross.

Well, the point is that you can play the class in card-chaos (which wa newly added, which grants you a new pack every week for just one win under special conditions) and the arena. If i dont got the cards for say a priest, i just do the other ones, take the gold from them go into the arena and draft a priest or the other classes deck. In the Arena and card-chaos, you can do quests and there noone can have an edge by buying cards.

I have to admit, at the beginning its just plain hard to get the uests, but after around some time of farming, its a self-roller