Elder Scrolls: Legends

[Dp101]

Maybe my problem with it is just that I'm playing against super easy AI and that's boring.

While the ai may be dumb, it is certainly better than the AI in hearthstone, the one in ES:L seems to miss lethal (as in winning, not the effect) far less often than the one in hearthstone did, and appears to be able to make more complex plays. I think it could honestly be a lot worse.

In other news I finished the singleplayer story and played my first MP match. Only complaint about the singleplayer is that the difficulty jump from the penultimate mission to the last one is way larger than any other difficulty jump. The game of MP felt a little unsatisfying, there were few effective combos played and things seemed to happen at random. I won though, so I guess that's good. Speaking of combos, right now it feels like every deck should contain as many cards of just one colour as possible for maximum effectiveness, due to the plethora of effects that trigger off of drawing a card of the same colour. I am pleased that there are some nice small combos however, like the Brutal Ashlander (1/1 that deals 3 when it dies to a random enemy) as a target for soul split (sacrifice a creature to get 2 3/2s in each lane) to get a strong board and good damage.

[Cheater Hater]

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.

Yes, the one thing that's completely awful in this game is the AI--it feels like they have no idea how to play around Guards at all. On one hand they'll suicide into Guards seemingly without a plan (which feels bad, though the absolute right answer to that probably requires the deepest level of strategy), but then they'll waste actions and items weakening a Guard they'll just suicide into anyway. However, I'm assuming you're still in the Story, which is about half-tutorial and half "get through this so you have a card base for Constructed and a gold base for Arena". Solo Arena still has the same awful AI, but it compensates by giving the AI much better, much more synergistic decks than you can get in Arena. Also, is the AI that great in Hearthstone? I haven't played all the Adventures (especially recent ones), but the normal mode is meant to be winnable by even the basic decks, while the Heroic mode pulls the same kind of overpowered BS to provide challenge--then again, I don't remember Hearthstone AI making boneheaded mistakes (probably because it's a much simpler game at the surface).

I also don't disagree with the UI complaints, though I don't think I can make an objective argument for it at this point now that I've gotten used to it. It does have the problem of conveying four rows of permanents, while the avatar doesn't convey much useful information (the color information moved to the edge of the screen).

As I mentioned in the description, the mana sink function of the hero powers has been replaced by the runes, and just greater card flow in general (there are more cantrips, notably).

[SevenSpirits]

The AI in hearthstone is the worst AI in game I've ever seen. It seems like ESL has a bit more of a single player focus though. I could be wrong about that.

[SevenSpirits]

As I mentioned in the description, the mana sink function of the hero powers has been replaced by the runes, and just greater card flow in general (there are more cantrips, notably).

By runes, you're talking about the extra card draws from taking damage? I don't see how that's related.

Let me clarify: I see two major functions of hero powers in hearthstone:

1) Make your feel-bad turns, when you draw too much late game early or too much early game late, a bit less bad.
2) Give you flexibility in playing either more for value (playing cards slowly, fitting in lots of hero powers) or tempo (spending your mana on cards as fast as possible), and adjusting how much you want to do each on the fly depending on matchup and the specific situation.

[Dp101]

As I mentioned in the description, the mana sink function of the hero powers has been replaced by the runes, and just greater card flow in general (there are more cantrips, notably).

By runes, you're talking about the extra card draws from taking damage? I don't see how that's related.

I think he is referring to how the runes give you more cards to spend mana on, so you don't need the hero power mana sinks anymore.

[Cheater Hater]

@Seven: Yeah, the extra card draw means you have more things to spend mana on; most of the time I'm topdecking is when I'm on an aggro draw (and thus have lots of unbroken runes).

The flexibility argument is harder to counter. In general, early creatures are better than late for the mana, so that helps a little (especially in Arena, since most of the good big creatures are higher rarities). The Coin equivalent being three charges instead also helps smooth out draws (though it causes problems in Arena where going 2-3-4 gives a large advantage, especially in Solo Arena where the AI has a stronger deck and seemingly always gets the perfect curve, at least in the aggro decks).

@Dp101: You probably faced another beginner (assuming you went to ranked--no reason not to as you can't lose stars until 9, and in fact you can't lose rank at all (at most you go into a two star "hole" below the start of your current rank)), and thus didn't have a tuned deck. You can have themes though, and each color pair has a definite "default deck" it defaults too, like the Last Gasp synergies you noticed in Blue that also go with Green (I ran into that deck on the ladder once and it seems interesting, though the fact that one of its key cards is a non-unique Legendary that triggers all your Last Gasps is discouraging). The main reason you're focused on single-color at the moment is that you get three of each Ally during the Story, and three of the five are great (red and green are kinda lackluster compared to the others, and even purple is just an efficient body). There aren't that many mono-color incentives after the Allies though, so you'll see the benefits after getting more cards most likely.

[SevenSpirits]

Two other things I think are worse than hearthstone:

1) 50-card decks. IMO Hearthstone was absolutely right in decreasing deck sizes to 30, so that long matches actually use the whole deck.
2) The miracle mechanic. Ugh.

[Cheater Hater]

Two other things I think are worse than hearthstone:

1) 50-card decks. IMO Hearthstone was absolutely right in decreasing deck sizes to 30, so that long matches actually use the whole deck.
2) The miracle mechanic. Ugh.

Both of these increase the randomness in the game, and in exchange, there is much less explicit randomness on the cards themselves (Brutal Ashlander (Blue 1/1, Last Gasp deal 3 to a random enemy) being the main exception, and predictably people want it to be nerfed). As someone coming from other CCGs, I would much rather the randomness be more invisible, implicit to the rules of the game rather than explicitly on the cards--I feel like I have much more control over how I'm building my deck than what Piloted Shredder pops out, or if Ragnaros hits my opponent's face rather than a useless 1/1. Going over your points in detail:

1. The larger deck size means there's more granularity to deck construction--each individual slot has a lower opportunity cost. Each individual card is also slightly less likely to appear in any individual draw (3/50 < 2/30), even before you consider unique cards (though that makes the swinginess of cards like the Green 2/1 that shuffles 3 "3/3 Lethal Draw a Card"s for 1 into your deck feel like a bad design decision). It also isn't quite as bad as it looks, since your starting hand size is essentially 8 once you factor in runes (though more on that in a second). In addition, Arena is 30 cards (though you do get to add cards to your deck in Solo Arena), so that option is technically still there.

2. Assuming you're talking about Prophecies, can you elaborate on this a bit more? Is it just the randomness you dislike, or are there other factors (like the penalty to aggro, at least blindly-played aggro)? There's also a deck-building aspect to this: Prophecies are generally weaker than equivalent cards, but you trade-off for the free spells and instant-speed interaction (something else you might not like).

I hope I'm not coming off as apologist with my defense of ES:L--I just like the game, and am trying to explain it and what I like about it.

[SevenSpirits]

2. Assuming you're talking about Prophecies, can you elaborate on this a bit more? Is it just the randomness you dislike, or are there other factors (like the penalty to aggro, at least blindly-played aggro)? There's also a deck-building aspect to this: Prophecies are generally weaker than equivalent cards, but you trade-off for the free spells and instant-speed interaction (something else you might not like).

Mainly, I don't like the swingy randomness. I also don't like the game design cost of instant speed interaction being spent just to have this mechanic.

[Cheater Hater]

2. Assuming you're talking about Prophecies, can you elaborate on this a bit more? Is it just the randomness you dislike, or are there other factors (like the penalty to aggro, at least blindly-played aggro)? There's also a deck-building aspect to this: Prophecies are generally weaker than equivalent cards, but you trade-off for the free spells and instant-speed interaction (something else you might not like).

Mainly, I don't like the swingy randomness. I also don't like the game design cost of instant speed interaction being spent just to have this mechanic.

Yeah, the instant-speed interaction requirement for prophecies is rough--other things like Last Gasp are specifically designed so this doesn't happen. Sadly, if you want it, you pretty much have to have it, because even summoning creatures is complicated by the lanes (though it could use the "lane with the least creatures" approach, like I believe the Support that summons a 1/1 each turn does), and having all the removal spells be random adds back in the explicit randomness the designers were trying to avoid.

Going back to the randomness point, what do you think of the swingy instances of explicit randomness in Hearthstone, like the Ragnaros example I mentioned, or the new hotness of Yogg-Sauron (which apparently is good enough for Constructed somehow?)? I feel like the Prophecies are much less swingy than those, and unless you're killing them that turn it doesn't matter much at all in the late game (as they'll generally just cast the card from the rune anyway). I feel like there's a lot of play around Prophecies: dealing the last batch of damage in one shot, leaving damage on the table to avoid breaking a rune, understanding where the "point of no return" is when dealing lethal through multiple runes to minimize the risk, memorizing which Prophecies each color can have (or just the good ones in Constructed/common ones in Limited). Honestly, I feel like the risks of a player going second curving out 2-3-4 is as much variance as the Prophecies (though that's exasperated by Solo Arena, where the AI has much better decks than the player).