Is Faeria turning into Hearthstone?

General
#1

I think it is no mystery that a sizeable percentage of Faeria players, including me, are former Hearthstone players; most of us are actual refugees from Blizzard’s unchecked greed and sloth. There were some things that truly irked people there, namely:
1 - Hearthstone is incredibly expensive: every three months or so, a new expansion is released, and the cost of having all cards is upwards of 1000 $; Faeria was the game where you could buy all cards for 50 bucks.
2 - Blizzard doesn’t just nerf OP cards: it waits months, until people are really angry, then completely annhilates the card, making it completely unplayable. Faeria was the game where regular updates tried to sensibly balance cards.
3 - Largely as a consequence of point 2, deck variety in Hearthstone is almost non-existent: with every expansion and every nerf, there emerge 2-3 viable championship decks; everything else is well under rank 10. Faeria was the game in which Aquablad could come up with a different viable deck every week.
4 - Among the 2-3 decks there always are annoying aggro/face decks that people with no skill can easily play and that annoy the hell out of everybody else. Faeria was the game where harvesting counted, and aggro decks did badly.

…fast forward to early December 2017.
1 - The 50 bucks option no longer exists; and no, it is NOT because people like the grind. It’s because this way a complete set of cards costs some 10 times more.
2 - Feed the Forest needs 5 green lands; I may admit it was a bit OP (albeit, really, it isn’t like you saw tons of them before the nerf) but what about adding one land to the cost and seeing how it went? With the previous patch, there was an attempt at making Ruunin playable (if in a somewhat cancerous way); now, this has been rendered completely vain and the only way to play last words decks is playing yellow, which is bloody annoying (see counterpoint 4). As if this weren’t enough, Three Wishes now reduces card costs by 1 instead of 3, which means 4-colour decks have completely disappeared. Would it kill them to try 2, especially after blathering that they want more multi-colour decks when promoting Oversky? Also, was Three Wishes OP? Have you seen it near the top of any tournament?
3 - After the 14/11 nerf, the meta in Faeria is worse than it has ever been in Hearthstone: basically, aside from aggro decks, the only common deck is red face. It wasn’t hard to predict this and nerf Shedim Brute and Grim Guard.
4 - The one deck that survived is yellow aggro, which has actually become viable with a smatter of green only since Oversky.

On top of all this, now Abrakam is “taking a break with official tournaments”, which translates, in plain English, to “we are no longer giving you goodies just for turning on Twitch” and coming up “with something fresh and hopefully more tailored to our competitive community’s desires”, which most likely translates, in plain English, to “we are trying to squeeze some serious money off competitions”. On top of it, since November 14, it has been impossible to play Faeria on older (read: from 2016) Android devices, far outdoing Hearthstone on one of its most universally reviled features, and without even having the decency of an announcement. Is it time to look for Faeria’s Faeria?

#2

Hello man, i try take your points and give you my opinion:

1/ I see many new player, i many of them goes god rank with at least one Tier 1 deck in the first month of play. Is it possible in HS ? Can we really compare the progression of collection in HS and Faeria ? For me, there is no compare possible, Faeria is way too friendly.
2/ NerfHammer dude, its true that Abrakam sometime use it like a BanHammer. But Feed is still play in some really good deck (like BG whale), so w8 and see)
3&4/ The meta is still diversify, there is many good option to climb, Yrush is not the only one and the best to do it. i put 2 account in top20 without playing it a single time and with 4-5 different deck, so, again, w8 and see.

And for your conclusion, december is a really problematic month for tournament organisation. Its time for familly meeting, and i remember last month, it was a pain to play a qualifier the 25 december … I think its a good time to make the MC dynamiq evolve, like every MC player want it because the system is like that since near 1.5 years.

Hope you can understand my bad english. Cya !

4 Likes
#3

I see your points and raise:slight_smile:
1 - I haven’t played HS in a while, but when I did, I think making it to Legend (the HS equivalent of God) for a relatively new player is entirely possible. All they need to do is cough up enough money to build one of the dominant aggro decks (the control ones, when they even exist, are usually very hard to play) and have some experience with any card game. I think it is actually easier to do than in Faeria (no board does simplify things). The cost is, I think, in the 500 dollars range, if you start from scratch.
2 - The point is, they didn’t use to nerf things like this; HS does it because they then come up with a replacement in the next expansion–basically, they do it, like everything else, out of greed and laziness. In Faeria, that expands every blue moon, all it does it shrink the meta.
3 - I seriously only see red harm and yellow(/green) rush above level 10, right now.

Won’t comment on December tournaments, but it looks to me like the format is over forever, not just for January.

#4

Think will be an eternal debate between level 10+ player and gods player. We don’t face and react to same meta problems at all (and i don’t judge your problems less important than mines, just really different). I am still earing some “Gods, burn is too op ! nerf it”.
Just a thing about point 1, when i say some player reach god rank in the first season, i was talking about free-to-play players, not pay-to-fast players.

#5

Burn is too OP, bloody nerf it! :smiley:
As for f2p players reaching god rank, I have looked, and I think it is possible: the Standard Annoying Red Deck only contains common and “rare”, one could probably build it in a month of intensive f2p. It most definitely isn’t possible in HS, where any standard deck has at least three legendaries, and legendaries have half the drop rate they have in Faeria, with no reroll.

As for the “eternal debate”, the ranking system is confusing and when I say “above level 10” I actually mean “at level 10-, including god”; at 10+, you see all sorts of things. The point is, people who make it to gods basically play standard decks and, right now, they play one of a maximum of three decks. This is not playing a CCG, it’s playing chess. I am not saying chess is not enjoyable for the right type and, indeed, the people who come at the top of HS are systematically from countries where chess is popular. But it really isn’t what we came here for.

#6

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I think comparisons to HS is something our community should do frequently. The day Faeria exceeds HS in popularity would be a good day I think (because Faeria is more fun). I’m sure Abrakam would be happy too.

  • OP seems like you were frustrated about a couple things, including maybe meta which has shifted. Any update or refinement in your opinion since then?
  • Your comparison to chess is a little bit self defeating. If you didn’t come for strategy, then, uh … :thinking:

Player base is an issue, and I think it will be inextricably linked to HS player base. If your top 1-4 “issues with HS” were truly the only factors in play, it wouldn’t be an issue. I think a discussion is warranted.

To me Faeria needs to surf a delicate line between “light and fun” and “strategy”. It is hard to do both. I like the quirky yak stuff, think perhaps there should be perks for “most points scored beyond zero” and “most wins with Krog on board” during ladder play, etc. Sorry, going off topic…

#7

Quick answer to your bulletpoints:

  • I haven’t seen any relevant change in any card since my original post; there have been changes in the meta, but I do hold Abrakam responsible for the cards, not for the meta, which is obviously hard to predict. My opinion of the chances remains abysmal: making cards unplayable and overlooking obvious OP is something HS can get away with because of their fast expansion cycle (generally, unplayable cards will have a playable equivalent and OP cards will have a nemesis within 3 months; Abrakam released one expansion in all of its existence. Then HS bought their best developer and they don’t seem to have done anything at all since).
  • To state the obvious, chess is not the only strategy game out there. It is one of a class of strategy games with set pieces, something there was little alternative to in the Early Middle Ages (when most of them were invented) but which have been (in my very personal opinion) made obsolete by the advent of computers.

For the most general point, for me all MTG rip-offs (call them evolutions, if you want, as MTG has jumped the shark a LONG time ago) have to promote one thing at all cost: deck variety. In this, they are, currently, all spectacularly failing. It could be promoted directly; however, this would imply a lot of math and, with the current p4p model, actually bring less cash in the coffers of publishers: not going to happen anytime soon.

#8

Seems to me Faeria players are a mix of “bored with HS”, “could never get in to HS”, “Gee I’m salty about HS for several reasons” and the weirdo minority (me) “what is this HS thing anyway?”. … I’m old, I know a successful business is an insanely delicate balance, I think devs at a small studio should be allowed to make profit, and I suspect that weekly changes / tweaks would be too expensive to constantly implement. (If you had any other suggestion or idea about how to fix the things you’re concerned about, I may have missed them. I’m on a low salt diet) I think Maihem’s point about devs needing a break over holiday seasons is legit too.

Anyway, CCG market is moving and changing. I think HS is the inevitable (& valid) comparison point, and that Faeria will always be linked to it, drawing out players who are more strategy minded. I still have fun, wish Abrakam success, and hope my feedback is constructive

1 Like
#9

Usually Abrakam makes meta changes every month. December were holidays. Expect meta change (balance patch) this month and onwards.

However, even though last balance patch was some time ago, I still believe meta is diverse and even not fully figured out yet. The fact that you think RY Burn is OP just enforces it. R Rush had not seen many plays til Aquablad popularized his deck, and now I think R Rush fever is fading away. There was a big viriety of decks in Manta Cup 3 as well.

#10

Faeria resembles Hearthstone so much (from menus to fx sounds to card names to even some lore) that at one point i thought the same game studio made them - this leaves a bad taste in my mouth, there is something to be said for originality. Nevertheless Faeria extends Hearthstone’s gameplay by introducing “board building” and faeria wells so it is way more strategic but they both suffer from the same issues. Most are related to its Pay to play expansions. I understand the need for paid expansions given the “free to play” status, i just dont understand why expansion only cards are even a thing. Wouldnt it be better to reward players with in game currency rather than special cards? Use the currency to buy packs and craft. If the card base remains the same throughout the game than there no need to balance (i question both game devs because not enough is done, not as if you get matched against players with a similiar card base…), no need to modify card detail (so stupid!). I play HS way more often these days, mostly because Blizzard has a good android version of their game allowing me to take the game any where.

#11

Uh…are you still expecting?