Elder Scrolls: Legends

[Cheater Hater]

As you may know, I like CCGs, and Magic in particular. However, I'm not in a good position for paper play (and the trend of releasing one set a month is starting to tire even me out), Magic Online is expensive for digital-only cards and has interface issues, and Magic Duels (their F2P option) is even worse (at least for multiplayer; it's good for learning and the story offerings). As such, other online CCGs have taken over the space, most notably Hearthstone. However, Hearthstone has its own problems: the automatic mana system is compensated for by lots of explicit randomness, Hero Powers lead to repetitive game states, the abundance of neutral cards leads to powerful cards becoming omnipresent, Blizzard refuses to balance Arena, etc). What can be done to fix some of these problems, without just being a carbon copy?

Bethesda decided to jump into the online CCG space with Elder Scrolls Legends, but when it was announced last E3 between Doom and Fallout 4, no one really cared. However, that changed when Dire Wolf Digital tweeted that they were developing the game. Dire Wolf Digital was a company made up of a lot of established Magic Pros (Luis Scott-Vargas, Patrick Chapin, Conley Woods, and many), and they had been working for about a year without word on what they were doing--granted, ES:L wasn't the only thing they're working on (their other big project is Eternal, which I have haven't played, but looks so much like a Magic clone I'm surprised they haven't been sued over it), but when gameplay debuted at PAX East it looked great (even if it's clearly a descendant of Hearthstone), and now it's in Open Beta. So what makes this stand out? As a TLDR, it adds a lot of Magic's complexity to the core Hearthstone formula, but here's a detailed recipe:

• Start with Hearthstone, including the starting life total and hand size, mana system, and general creature size (cheap creatures are slightly larger, expensive creatures are slightly smaller).
  
• Instead of Hero Powers as a mana sink/catch-up system, add in shields and shield triggers from Duelmasters/Kaijudo (runes/prophecies) This also adds to the variance, while making games last longer.
  
• Have two lanes to put creatures in, which adds a lot more strategy than you would think (replacing the positioning in Hearthstone, which didn't come up nearly as much).
  
• Increase the deck size to 50 with 3 of each card to increase randomness, while removing most of the explicit randomness from the cards.
  
• Have five colors of cards, of which you can use two in a deck (creating ten "classes"), allowing you to reuse parts of your collection in different decks without having all the good cards be neutral.
  
• Add in Artifacts/Enchantments from Magic (Items/Supports) to add variety.
  
• Have a surprising amount of solo content from the start (a decently-long story, and a Solo Arena mode), which adds up to what feels like an extremely-generous F2P model (which is mitigated somewhat by decks requiring more cards overall, but that doesn't affect Arena).
  

I'm surprised at how much I'm liking ES:L, with how quickly I eventually got off the Hearthstone train, but I think it's really good. That's not to say there aren't things I don't like (in particular, Solo Arena has problems--the AI is awful, so the designers compensated by giving it insanely good/synergistic decks, which makes the game a lot more random), but it's beta, so those things can change. Give it a try and let me know what you think!

(I don't know if this should have been here or in the Hearthstone forum, but I feel like it will get more eyes here--it's not like I put the Magic thread there )

[Dp101]

Just downloaded the game, how critical is the opening choice of race? I'm really worried that I'm going to badly screw myself if I go with the wrong option.

[Cheater Hater]

Just downloaded the game, how critical is the opening choice of race? I'm really worried that I'm going to badly screw myself if I go with the wrong option.

The opening choice of race isn't that meaningful; it just influences some of the cards you get when you level-up. I also think you can change it at any time by changing your avatar. Here's what each of the aspects (colors) do if you're interested:

Strength (red fist): Lots of aggressive creatures: lots of Charge (haste), lots of pinging creatures, lots of Breakthrough (trample), lots of items
Intelligence (blue tome): Defensive creatures, burn (direct damage), Wards (Divine Shield), Items, Guards (Taunt), Shackles (freeze), Prophecies, card draw, Supports
Willpower (yellow animal): Weenies, filling the board, pump, unconditional creature removal, health gain/Drain (Lifelink), Supports
Agility (green arrow): Small cheap creatures, weakening other creatures (-X/-X effects), destroying Wounded creatures, creature synergies, Lethal (Deathtouch) creatures
Endurance (purple anvil): Expensive creatures, mana ramp, Lethal (deathtouch) creatures, defensive creatures, Silence effects, Guards (Taunt)

Then each of the races corresponds to a color pair (these aren't 100% confirmed, but I think they're close based on Solo Arena and the description):
Argonian: Green/Purple (this is what I chose)
Breton: Blue/Purple
Dark Elf: Green/Blue
High Elf: Yellow/Blue
Imperial: Yellow/Purple
Khajiit: Green/Yellow
Nord: Red/Yellow
Orc: Red/Purple
Redguard: Red/Blue
Wood Elf: Red/Green

Just let me know if you have any other questions, I'll try to answer them if I can.

[Dp101]

Is it advisable to play through all the single player content before starting multiplayer? I've played through the first 10 missions and have finally lost one, so I'm wondering if I should try something else. Also, is there any way to go back on the choices you make for upgrades? The upgrade of the 3/3 into either a 3/6 guard or a 6/3 breakthrough happened before they introduced shadow lanes, so I picked the 3/6 because I assumed that 6/3s would end up kind of like the magma rager from hearthstone, great attack but dies instantly to weak creatures without doing anything, so I went for the 3/6 but now I regret my choice.

[Cheater Hater]

Is it advisable to play through all the single player content before starting multiplayer? I've played through the first 10 missions and have finally lost one, so I'm wondering if I should try something else. Also, is there any way to go back on the choices you make for upgrades? The upgrade of the 3/3 into either a 3/6 guard or a 6/3 breakthrough happened before they introduced shadow lanes, so I picked the 3/6 because I assumed that 6/3s would end up kind of like the magma rager from hearthstone, great attack but dies instantly to weak creatures without doing anything, so I went for the 3/6 but now I regret my choice.

It depends on which multiplayer you're talking about. If you like your deck there's no reason not to go into Versus Battle, but you unlock more decks (and thus a basic group of cards for each color) as you progress in the story (though you can get the last couple through player level too). If you're having trouble with story missions go through the deck you like and remove cards you don't like and/or are weak from it (as a smaller deck size means you're more likely to draw your best cards). I also think you have to unlock Arena through Story, so I'd recommend at least unlocking that.

AFAIK there's no way to go back on your decisions (either leveling or Story, though I haven't gone back to the story to check). However, all the upgrades are in the packs, so you aren't missing anything, especially with the early low-rarity upgrades. Also, I think the 3/6 Guard is better than the 6/3 Breakthrough, but I haven't played much Yellow, especially in Constructed. (and Magma Rager is the 9/1 for 4 in Red--remember that Cover only protects your creatures from being attacked, not from Actions or abilities; that tripped me up a lot after playing with Stealth)

What do you think of ES:L so far Dp101? What experience with CCGs have you had prior to this?

[Dp101]

What do you think of ES:L so far Dp101? What experience with CCGs have you had prior to this?

I'm enjoying it, my only real complaint is that it feels like half the time you pick one lane to play into and your opponent picks the other, and then you proceed to never interact for the rest of the game. My experience with CCGs is rather limited, I played a bunch of yugioh back in primary school but everyone there was terrible and no one plays here. I have played a little magic using some starter packs with my parents who used to play ~30 years ago, but they don't play magic with me anymore because I generally beat them, and I don't play because I can't find anyone to play with. Tried out hearthstone for a bit, but the grind and the fact that everyone else seemed to have better cards than me sucked the fun out of that game.

[SevenSpirits]

I tried it out yesterday and I wasn't that impressed. While I do think that hearthstone's biggest problem is that being the person who has board control gives you almost 100% ability to attack your opponent's permanents, and the two lanes system does help with this, I thought in a lot of ways it was worse.

[Cheater Hater]

@Dp101: Are you having that complaint in SP or MP? One of the main things is that the asymmetry of the lanes means there are interesting decisions to make. I'll admit it hasn't come up much in my games, and the one it has mostly come via an AI exploit (the AI puts a lot of low-power creatures in one lane, or a lot of 1-toughness creatures I'm trying to sweep with a Fireball or the Green 5/4 for 7 that gives -1/-1 to the opposing lane).

@SevenSpirits: How does it make it worse? How much did you get to play--did they introduce Shadow lanes yet (I don't remember the exact progressions of the story)?

[Dp101]

@Dp101: Are you having that complaint in SP or MP?

Just singleplayer so far, although about to try multiplayer.

[SevenSpirits]

I played 1 or 2 games past the introduction of shadow lanes. Maybe my problem with it is just that I'm playing against super easy AI and that's boring. I spoke to a friend today who had the same initial experience but gave it a bit longer and ended up liking it more than Hearthstone. I guess I'll give it another shot.

Concrete things I thought were worse:
1) The UI. It's a lot less good. Hugely annoying time stop from your start-of-turn draw, and if you play quickly, some of your actions don't take. And I'm not an artist, but I think the overall screen layout does a worse job of conveying the information to you. It seems to not make enough use of different colors, for one.
2) The 1 mana every turn system, without any kind of mana sink like hero powers, seems bad to me.