I’ll start this off with full disclosure: I have only recently really started to play Hearthstone. I enjoy the game quite a bit, and intend to continue playing. I understand the basics pretty well, and have done well in the few ranked games I’ve played so far. However, I am far from an expert. With that said, it’s coming from the new player perspective that I write this…holy cow, it can be rough for a new player to try to make a deck.

I’ve been involved with card games for a long time; I dabbled in Magic: The Gathering in the (distant) past, and played Yu-Gi-Oh! semi-competitively for approximately seven years. This isn’t to try to make myself out to be some sort of expert in this area, just to establish a baseline of experience. When compared to any other traditional card game, it takes significantly more work to put together a somewhat reasonable deck in Hearthstone. Now, there are both positives and negatives to this, so let’s quickly take a look at those.

Why it’s a good thing

Hearthstone has a significantly lower barrier of entry when compared to other card games. The basic mechanics are much easier to understand, and given that it’s completely electronic, tooltips are easy to put in place to make sure there’s little confusion. Because it can be entirely free to play, and is much more accessible to players new to card games, it almost demands that creating a competitive-worthy deck must be a challenge. If it weren’t, you’d only come across people that had the best possible decks, and that’s not good for any game. Both a casual and serious player need to be able to play against like-minded opponents, and this enables that.

Why it might not be a good thing

You can play arena after arena, open pack after pack, and still be nowhere close to constructing a top tier deck. For a player who might just want to craft that one deck they really like and try to climb the ladder with it, if they can spend a lot of time (and possibly money) without feeling like they’re making any real progress with their card collection, that can be very discouraging. Such players may decide that this game simply isn’t worth their time, and quit. Now, you may think something along the lines of, “Well, if it’s that easy to turn them off of the game, then they didn’t really care that much about it, we don’t need them anyway.” If you did think that, you’re wrong! While it’s important to help out the dedicated players, it’s the casual/semi-casual players that Blizzard really wants to keep around. This has been the business model for any “free to play” game, and it holds true here. It’s why some progress is necessary, but you can’t just hand over every card in the game with minimal effort. You need to give players something to work towards.

Now, that might sound like an argument for keeping the system as it is now, and in a way, it is. At the same time, it’s possible that the time invested doesn’t quite match up with the rewards given. I could compare Hearthstone to another card game, and point out that if I really want a certain card badly enough in MTG or YGO, I can simply purchase it. However, that wouldn’t be a great comparison, because Hearthstone doesn’t function in the same way, since it is technically free to play. Instead, let’s compare it to another popular free to play competitive game, League of Legends. Incidentally, League has its own problems with the new player experience, but that’s a discussion for another time. If I want to be competitive in LoL, I need to unlock champions and runes, just as I need to unlock cards in Hearthstone. I may not use those champions/cards as effectively as a more experienced player will, but at least I can get the tools I need. In League, if I earn enough in-game currency, I can choose to unlock a specific champion that I want to get better with. However, in Hearthstone, in-game currency can’t buy me specific cards. I can only get packs, and if I don’t get anything I need in those packs, or any cards with high disenchanting values, I essentially wasted my gold. The time that I spent grinding in Arena, or working on my quests, always has the chance to be for naught.

Of course the flipside of that, is that just one pack might get me one or more excellent cards, making it a huge payoff. However, for those of us whose real-life Luck stat isn’t very high, opening a bunch of packs could result in no Epics, no Legendaries, and not even the commons or rares we needed for that one deck we’re trying to make. It’s this situation that can get frustrating, since it feels like all the effort we spent over the past week (just an example) resulted in no real progress.

There's just SO MANY of them

The last point I have to make is that most players aren’t trying to become professionals. They simply want to try to climb the ladder, the same way most League of Legends players might want to get to Diamond or Master tier, but aren’t trying to go pro. Just putting together a single top tier deck to try to get to Legend with can be challenging, especially if the meta changes and the deck you wanted to play stops being top tier. However, let’s consider those that want to play in tournaments, even if they’re just small events. Now, you need multiple top tier decks. The amount of time (and possibly money) you have to invest to get 3 or 4 top decks is staggering. For someone who wants to work towards that, but can’t play for hours on end each day or spend much money on the game, it’s a difficult situation to be in. Realistically, they’re probably not going to be able to try to test their skill against players in a tournament setting, as they’re being held back by their card pool.

To be clear, I’m not saying that it’s impossible to do anything in the game without a vast card pool. For those who just want to get a game in every once in a while, or just get to rank 20 each season for the card backs, that’s perfectly alright even without really building up your card collection. However, for those that really want to try to climb the ladder, or even try to play in a minor tournament, the game demands a hefty time investment, and even that isn’t a guarantee of anything. I don’t believe obtaining strong cards should be significantly easier than it is now, but slightly easier would probably be a positive step. Perhaps some way that enough time invested could allow you to work towards specific cards, instead of relying solely on luck, would be appropriate. We don’t want the game to simply be pay to win, and I agree with that sentiment. However, a completely luck based system doesn’t seem to be the right way to go, either. In the end, I’m going to keep playing the game, as it really is fantastic. It’s just that with limited time to play, I’d like to really feel like I’m working towards something specific, rather than hoping that eventually, with enough luck, I’ll get to the cards I really want.